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"  Presently  our  hunter  came  back." 


Journal. 


JAMES  RUSSELL   LOWELL. 


EllustraUU. 


BOSTON: 

JAMES    R.    OSGOOD    AND    COMPANY, 

Late  Ticknor  and  Fields,  and  Fields,  Osgood,  &  Co. 
l877. 


Copyright,  1864,  by 
JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


University  Press  :  Welch.  Bigelow,  &  Co. 
Cambridge. 


CONTENTS. 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL 
AT  SEA    . 


986228 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


"  Presently  our  hunters  came  back  " 
"<  Wahl,  't  ain't  usliil,'  said  he  "   . 
"  We  sat  round  and  ate  thankfully  "  . 
"  He  had  begun  upon  a  second  bottle  "  . 


Page 
.    33 


49 

.     55 


A 


A  MOOSBHBAD  JOURNAL. 

Addressed  to  the  Edelmann  Storg  at  the  Bagni  di 
Lucca. 

[HURSDAY,  \lth  August.  — I  knew 
as  little  yesterday  of  the  interior  of 
Maine  as  the  least  penetrating  person 
knows  of  the  inside  of  that  great  social  mill- 
stone which,  driven  by  the  river  Time,  sets 
imperatively  agoing  the  several  wheels  of  our 
individual  activities.  Born  while  Maine  was 
still  a  province  of  native  Massachusetts,  I  was 
as  much  a  foreigner  to  it  as  yourself,  my  dear 
Storg.  I  had  seen  many  lakes,  ranging  from 
that  of  Virgil's  Cumsean  to  that  of  Scott's 
Caledonian  Lady  ;  but  Moosehead,  within  two 
days  of  me,  had  never  enjoyed  the  profit  of 
being  mirrored  in  my  retina.  At  the  sound  of 
the  name,  no  reminiscential  atoms  (according 


12  A   MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL. 

to  Kenelm  Digby's  Theory  of  Association,  — 
as  good  as  any)  stirred  and  marshalled  them- 
selves in  my  brain.  The  truth  is,  we  think 
lightly  of  Nature's  penny  shows,  and  estimate 
what  we  see  by  the  cost  of  the  ticket.  Em- 
pedocles  gave  his  life  for  a  pit-entrance  to 
^Itna,  and  no  doubt  found  his  account  in  it. 
Accordingly,  the  clean  face  of  Cousin  Bull  is 
imaged  patronizingly  in  Lake  George,  and 
Loch  Lomond  glasses  the  hurried  countenance 
of  Jonathan,  diving  deeper  in  the  streams  of 
European  association  (and  coming  up  drier) 
than  any  other  man.  Or  is  the  cause  of  our 
not  caring  to  see  what  is  equally  within  the 
reach  of  all  our  neighbors  to  be  sought  in  that 
aristocratic  principle  so  deeply  implanted  in 
human  nature  ?  I  knew  a  pauper  graduate 
who  always  borrowed  a  black  coat,  and  came 
to  eat  the  Commencement  dinner,  —  not  that 
it  was  better  than  the  one  which  daily  graced 
the  board  of  the  public  institution  in  which  he 
hibernated  (so  to  speak)  during  the  other  three 
hundred  and  sixty-four  days  of  the  year,  save 
in  this  one  particular,  that  none  of  his  elee- 
mosynary fellow-commoners  could  eat  it.  If 


A    MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL.  13 

there  are  unhappy  men  who  wish  that  they 
were  as  the  Babe  Unborn,  there  are  more  who 
would  aspire  to  the  lonely  distinction  of  being 
that  other  figurative  personage,  the  Oldest 
Inhabitant.  You  remember  the  charming  ir- 
resolution of  our  dear  Esthwaite,  (like  Mac- 
heath  between  his  two  doxies,)  divided  between 
his  theory  that  he  is  under  thirty,  and  his  pride 
at  being  the  only  one  of  us  who  witnessed  the 
September  gale  and  the  rejoicings  at  the  Peace  ? 
Nineteen  years  ago  I  was  walking  through  the 
Franconia  Notch,  and  stopped  to  chat  with  a 
hermit,  who  fed  with  gradual  logs  the  un- 
wearied teeth  of  a  saw-mill.  As  the  panting 
steel  slit  off  the  slabs  of  the  log,  so  did  the  less 
willing  machine  of  talk,  acquiring  a  steadier 
up-and-down  motion,  pare  away  that  outward 
bark  of  conversation  which  protects  the  core, 
and  which,  like  other  bark,  has  naturally  most 
to  do  with  the  weather,  the  season,  and  the 
heat  of  the  day.  At  length  I  asked  him  the 
best  point  of  view  for  the  Old  Man  of  the 
Mountain. 

"  Dunno,  —  never  see  it." 

Too  young  and  too  happy  either  to  feel  or 


14  A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL. 

\ 

affect  the  Juvenalian  indifference,  I  was  sin- 
cerely astonished,  and  I  expressed  it. 

The  log-compelling  man  attempted  no  justi- 
fication, but  after  a  little  asked,  "  Come  from 
Bawsn?" 

"Yes"  (with  peninsular  pride). 

"  Goodie  to  see  in  the  vycinity  o'  Bawsn." 

"  0  yes  !  "  I  said,  and  I  thought,  —  see 
Boston  and  die  !  see  the  State  Houses,  old 
and  new,  the  caterpillar  wooden  bridges  crawl- 
ing with  innumerable  legs  across  the  flats  of 
Charles  ;  see  the  Common,  —  largest  park, 
doubtless,  in  the  world,  —  with  its  files  of  trees 
planted  as  if  by  a  drill-sergeant,  and  then  for 
your  nunc  dimittis  ! 

"  I  should  like,  'awl,  I  should  like  to  stan, 
on  Bunker  Hill.  You've  ben  there  offen, 
likely  ?  " 

"N — o — o,"  unwillingly,  seeing  the  little 
end  of  the  horn  in  clear  vision  at  the  terminus 
of  this  Socratic  perspective. 

"  'Awl,  my  young  frien',  you  've  larned 
neow  thet  wut  a  man  kin  see  any  day  for 
nawthin',  childern  half  price,  he  never  doos 
see.  Nawthin'  pay,  nawthin'  vally." 


A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL.  15 

With  this  modern  instance  of  a  wise  saw,  I 
departed,  deeply  revolving  these  things  with 
myself,  and  convinced  that,  whatever  the  ratio 
of  population,  the  average  amount  of  human 
nature  to  the  square  mile  is  the  same  the  world 
over.  I  thought  of  it  when  I  saw  people  upon 
the  Fincian  wondering  at  the  Alchemist  sun, 
as  if  he  never  burned  the  leaden  clouds  to 
gold  in  sight  of  Charles  Street.  I  thought  of 
it  when  I  found  eyes  first  discovering  at  Mont 
Blanc  how  beautiful  snow  was.  As  I  walked 
on,  I  said  to  myself,  There  is  one  exception, 
wise  hermit,  —  it  is  just  these  gratis  pictures 
which  the  poet  puts  in  his  show-box,  and  which 
we  all  gladly  pay  Wordsworth  and  the  rest  for 
a  peep  at.  The  divine  faculty  is  to  see  what 
everybody  can  look  at. 

While  every  well-informed  man  in  Europe, 
from  the  barber  down  to  the  diplomatist,  has 
his  view  of  the  Eastern  Question,  why  should 
I  not  go  personally  down  East  and  see  for  my- 
self? Why  not,  like  Tancred,  attempt  my 
own  solution  of  the  Mystery  of  the  Orient,  — 
doubly  mysterious  when  you  begin  the  two 
words  with  capitals  ?  You  know  my  way  of 


16  A   MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL. 

doing  things,  to  let  them  simmer  in  my  mind 
gently  for  months,  and  at  last  do  them  im- 
promptu in  a  kind  of  desperation,  driven  by  the 
.Eumeuides  of  unfulfilled  purpose.  So,  after 
talking  about  Moosehead  till  nobody  believed 
me  capable  of  going  thither,  I  found  myself  at 
the  Eastern  Railway  station.  The  only  event 
of  the  journey  hither  (I  am  now  at  Waterville) 
was  a  boy  hawking  exhilaratingly  the  last  great 
railroad  smash,  —  thirteen  lives  lost,  —  and  no 
doubt  devoutly  wishing  there  had  been  fifty. 
This  having  a  mercantile  interest  in  horrors, 
holding  stock,  as  it  were,  in  murder,  misfortune, 
and  pestilence,  must  have  an  odd  effect  on  the 
human  mind.  The  birds  of  ill-omen,  at  whose 
sombre  flight  the  rest  of  the  world  turn  pale, 
are  the  ravens  which  bring  food  to  this  little 
outcast  in  the  wilderness.  If  this  lad  give 
thanks  for  daily  bread,  it  would  be  curious  to 
inquire  what  that  phrase  represents  to  his  un- 
derstanding. If  there  ever  be  a  plum  in  it,  it 
is  Sin  or  Death  that  puts  it  in.  Other  details 
of  my  dreadful  ride  I  will  spare  you.  Suffice 
it  that  I  arrived  here  in  safety,  —  in  complexion 
like  an  Ethiopian  serenader  half  got-up,  and  so 


A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL.  17 

broiled  and  peppered  that  I  was  more  like  a  dev- 
illed kidney  than  anything  else  I  can  think  of. 
10  P.  M.  — The  civil  landlord  and  neat  cham- 
ber at  the  "  Elm  wood  House"  were  very  grate- 
ful, and  after  tea  I  set  forth  to  explore  the 
town.  It  has  a  good  chance  of  being  pretty ; 
but,  like  most  American  towns,  it  is  in  a  hob- 
bledehoy age,  growing  yet,  and  one  cannot  tell 
what  may  happen.  A  child  with  great  promise 
of  beauty  is  often  spoiled  by  its  second  teeth. 
There  is  something  agreeable  in  the  sense  of 
completeness  which  a  walled  town  gives  one. 
It  is  entire,  like  a  crystal,  —  a  work  which 
man  has  succeeded  in  finishing.  I  think  the 
human  mind  pines  more  or  less  where  every- 
thing is  new,  and  is  better  for  a  diet  of  stale 
bread.  The  number  of  Americans  who  visit 
the  Old  World  is  beginning  to  afford  matter  of 
speculation  to  observant  Europeans,  and  the 
deep  inspirations  with  which  they  breathe  the 
air  of  antiquity,  as  if  their  mental  lungs  had 
been  starved  with  too  thin  an  atmosphere. 
JFor  my  own  part,  I  never  saw  a  house  which 
I  thought  old  enough  to  be  torn  down.  It  is 
too  like  that  Scythian  fashion  of  knocking  old 


18  A    MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL. 

people  011  the  head.  I  cannot  help  thinking 
that  the  indefinable  something  which  we  call 
character  is  cumulative, — that  the  influence 
of  the  same  climate,  scenery,  and  associations 
for  several  generations  is  necessary  to  its  gath- 
ering head,  and  that  the  process  is  disturbed 
by  continual  change  of  place.  The  American 
is  nomadic  in  religion,  in  ideas,  in  morals,  and 
leaves  his  faith  and  opinions  with  as  much  in- 
difference as  the  house  in  which  he  was  born. 
However,  we  need  not  bother :  Nature  takes 
care  not  to  leave  out  of  the  great  heart  of  so- 
ciety either  of  its  two  ventricles  of  hold-back 
and  go-ahead. 

It  seems  as  if  every  considerable  American 
town  must  have  its  one  specimen  of  every- 
thing, and  so  there  is  a  college  in  Waterville, 
the  buildings  of  which  are  three  in  number, 
of  brick,  and  quite  up  to  the  average  ugliness 
which  seems  essential  in  edifices  of  this  de- 
scription. Unhappily,  they  do  not  reach  that 
extreme  of  ugliness  where  it  and  beauty  come 
together  in  the  clasp  of  fascination.  We  erect" 
handsomer  factories  for  cottons,  woollens,  and 
steam-engines,  than  for  doctors,  lawyers,  and 


A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL.  19 

parsons.  The  truth  is,  that,  till  our  struggle 
with  nature  is  over,  till  this  shaggy  hemi- 
sphere is  tamed  and  suhj  ugated,  the  workshop 
will  be  the  college  whose  degrees  will  be  most 
valued.  Moreover,  steam  has  made  travel  so 
easy  that  the  great  university  of  the  world  is 
open  to  all  comers,  and  the  old  cloister  sys- 
tem is  falling  astern.  Perhaps  it  is  only  the 
more  needed,  and,  were  I  rich,  I  should  like 
to  found  a  few  lazyships  in  my  Alma  Mater 
as  a  kind  of  counterpoise.  The  Anglo-Saxon 
race  has  accepted  the  primal  curse  as  a  bless- 
ing, has  deified  work,  and  would  not  have 
thanked  Adam  for  abstaining  from  the  apple. 
They  would  have  dammed  the  four  rivers 
of  Paradise,  substituted  cotton  for  fig-leaves 
among  the  antediluvian  populations,  and  com- 
mended man's  first  disobedience  as  a  wise 
measure  of  political  economy.  But  to  return 
to  our  college.  We  cannot  have  fine  build- 
ings till  we  are  less  in  a  hurry.  We  snatch 
an  education  like  a  meal  at  a  railroad-station. 
Just  in  time  to  make  us  dyspeptic,  the  whistle 
shrieks,  and  we  must  rush,  or  lose  our  places 
in  the  great  train  of  life.  Yet  noble  architec- 


20  A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL. 

ture  is  one  element  of  patriotism,  and  an  emi- 
nent one  of  culture,  the  finer  portions  of 
•which  are  taken  in  by  unconscious  absorption 
through  the  pores  of  the  mind  from  the  sur- 
rounding atmosphere.  I  suppose  we  must 
wait,  for  we  are  a  great  bivouac  as  yet  rather 
than  a  nation, — on  the  march  from  the  At- 
lantic to  the  .Pacific,  —  and  pitch  tents  instead 
of  building  houses.  Our  very  villages  seem 
to  be  in  motion,  following  westward  the  be- 
witching music  of  some  Pied  Piper  of  Hame- 
lin.  We  still  feel  the  great  push  toward  sun- 
down given  to  the  peoples  somewhere  in  the 
gray  dawn  of  history.  The  cliff-swallow  alone 
of  all  animated  nature  emigrates  eastward. 

Friday,  IWi.— The  coach  leaves  Water- 
ville  at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  one 
must  breakfast  in  the  dark  at  a  quarter  past 
four,  because  a  train  starts  at  twenty  minutes 
before  five,  —  the  passengers  by  both  convey- 
ances being  pastured  gregariously.  So  one 
must  be  up  at  half  past  three.  The  primary 
geological  formations  contain  no  trace  of  man, 
and  it  seems  to  me  that  these  eocene  periods 
of  the  day  are  not  fitted  for  sustaining  the 


A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL.  21 

luiman  forms  of  life.  One  of  the  Fathers  held 
that  the  sun  was  created  to  be  worshipped  at 
his  rising  by  the  Gentiles.  The  more  reason 
that  Christians  (except,  perhaps,  early  Chris- 
tians) should  abstain  from  these  heathenish 
ceremonials.  As  one  arriving  by  an  early 
train  is  welcomed  by  a  drowsy  maid  with  the 
sleep  scarce  brushed  out  of  her  hair,  and 
finds  empty  grates  and  polished  mahogany,  on 
whose  arid  plains  the  pioneers  of  breakfast 
have  not  yet  encamped,  so  a  person  waked 
thus  unseasonably  is  sent  into  the  world  before 
his  faculties  are  up  and  dressed  to  serve  him. 
It  might  have  been  for  this  reason  that  my 
stomach  resented  for  several  hours  a  piece  of 
fried  beefsteak  which  I  forced  upon  it,  or, 
more  properly  speaking,  a  piece  of  that  leath- 
ern conveniency  which  in  these  regions  as- 
sumes the  name.  You  will  find  it  as  hard 
to  believe,  my  dear  Storg,  as  that  quarrel  of 
the  Sorbonists,  whether  one  should  say  ego 
amat  or  no,  that  the  use  of  the  gridiron  is 
unknown  hereabout,  and  so  near  a  river 
named  after  St.  Lawrence,  too! 

To-day  has  been  the  hottest  day  of  the  sea- 


22  A   MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL. 

son,  yet  our  drive  has  not  been  unpleasant. 
For  a  considerable  distance  we  followed  the 
course  of  the  Sebasticook  River,  a  pretty 
stream  with  alternations  of  dark  brown  pools 
and  wine-colored  rapids.  On  each  side  of  the 
road  the  land  had  been  cleared,  and  little  one- 
story  farm-houses  were  scattered  at  intervals. 
But  the  stumps  still  held  out  in  most  of  the 
fields,  and  the  tangled  wilderness  closed  in 
behind,  striped  here  and  there  with  the  slim 
white  trunks  of  the  elm.  As  yet  only  the 
edges  of  the  great  forest  have  been  nibbled 
away.  Sometimes  a  root-fence  stretched  up 
its  bleaching  antlers,  like  the  trophies,  of  a 
giant  hunter.  Now  and  then  the  houses 
thickened  into  an  unsocial-looking  village,  and 
we  drove  up  to  the  grocery  to  leave  and  take 
a  mail-bag,  stopping  again  presently  to  water 
the  horses  at  some  pallid  little  tavern,  whose 
one  red-curtained  eye  (the  bar-room)  had  been 
put  out  by  the  inexorable  thrust  of  Maine 
Law.  Had  Shenstone  travelled  this  road,  he 
would  never  have  written  that  famous  stanza 
of  his ;  had  Johnson,  he  would  never  have 
quoted  it.  They  are  to  real  inns  as  the  skull 


A   MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL.  23 

of  Yorick  to  his  face.  Where  these  villages 
occurred  at  a  distance  from  the  river,  it  was 
difficult  to  account  for  them.  On  the  river- 
bank,  a  saw-mill  or  a  tannery  served  as  a  logi- 
cal premise,  and  saved  them  from  total  incon- 
sequentiality.  As  we  trailed  along,  at  the 
rate  of  about  four  miles  an  hour,  it  was  dis- 
covered that  one  of  our  mail-bags  was  missing. 
"  Guess  somebody  '11  pick  it  up,"  said  the 
driver  coolly  :  "  't  any  rate,  likely  there  's 
nothin'  in  it."  Who  knows  how  long  it  took 
some  Elam  D.  or  Zebulon  K.  to  compose  the 
missive  intrusted  to  that  vagrant  bag,  and 
how  much  longer  to  persuade  Pamela  Grace 
or  Sophronia  Melissa  that  it  had  really  and 
truly  been  written?  The  discovery  of  our 
loss  was  made  by  a  tall  man  who  sat  next  to 
me  on  the  top  of  the  coach,  every  one  of 
whose  senses  seemed  to  be  prosecuting  its 
several  investigation  as  we  went  along.  Pres- 
ently, sniffing  gently,  he  remarked:  "Tears 
to  me  's  though  I  smelt  sunthin'.  Ain't  the 
aix  het,  think  ?  "  The  driver  pulled  up,  and, 
sure  enough,  the  off  fore-wheel  was  found 
to  be  smoking.  In  three  minutes  he  had 


24  A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL. 

snatched  a  rail  from  the  fence,  made  a  lever, 
raised  the  coach,  and  taken  off  the  wheel, 
bathing  the  hot  axle  and  box  with  water  from 
the  river.  It  was  a  pretty  spot,  and  I  was 
not  sorry  to  lie  under  a  beech -tree  (Tityrus- 
like,  meditating  over  my  pipe)  and  watch  the 
operations  of  the  fire-annihilator.  I  could  not 
help  contrasting  the  ready  helpfulness  of  our 
driver,  all  of  whose  wits  were  about  him,  cur- 
rent, and  redeemable  in  the  specie  of  action  on 
emergency,  with  an  incident  of  travel  in  Italy, 
where,  under  a  somewhat  similar  stress  of  cir- 
cumstances, our  vetturino  had  nothing  for  it 
but  to  dash  his  hat  on  the  ground  and  call  on 
Saut'  Antonio,  the  Italian  tlercules. 

There  being  four  passengers  for  the  Lake, 
a  vehicle  called  a  mud -wagon  was  detailed 
at  Newport  for  our  accommodation.  In  this 
we  jolted  and  rattled  along  at  a  livelier  pace 
than  in  the  coach.  As  we  got  farther  north, 
the  country  (especially  the  hills)  gave  evi- 
dence of  longer  cultivation.  About  the  thriv- 
ing town  of  Dexter  we  saw  fine  farms  and 
crops.  The  houses,  too,  became  prettier; 
hop-vines  were  trained  about  the  doors,  and 


A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL.  25 

hung  their  clustering  thyrsi  over  the  open 
windows.  A  kind  of  wild  rose  (called  by 
the  country  folk  the  primrose)  and  asters  were 
planted  about  the  door-yards,  and  orchards, 
commonly  of  natural  fruit,  added  to  the  pleas- 
ant home-look.  But  everywhere  we  could 
see  that  the  war  between  the  white  man  and 
the  forest  was  still  fierce,  and  that  it  would 
be  a  long  while  yet  before  the  axe  was  buried. 
The  haying  being  over,  fires  blazed  or  smoul- 
dered against  the  stumps  in  the  fields,  and  the 
blue  smoke  widened  slowly  upward  through 
the  quiet  August  atmosphere.  It  seemed  to 
me  that  I  could  hear  a  sigh  now  and  then 
from  the  immemorial  pines,  as  they  stood 
watching  these  camp-fires  of  the  inexorable 
invader.  Evening  set  in,  and,  as  we  crunched 
ahd  crawled  up  the  long  gravelly  hills,  I  some- 
times began  to  fancy  that  Nature  had  forgot- 
ten to  make  the  corresponding  descent  on 
the  other  side.  But  erelong  we  were  rushing 
down  at  full  speed ;  and,  inspired  by  the 
dactylic  beat  of  the  horses'  hoofs,  I  essayed 
to  repeat  the  opening  lines  of  Evangeline. 
At  the  moment  I  was  beginning,  we  plunged 


26  A   MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL. 

into  a  hollow,  where  the  soft  clay  had  been 
overcome  by  a  road  of  unhewn  logs.  I  got 
through  one  line  to  this  corduroy  accompani- 
ment, somewhat  as  a  country  choir  stretches 
a  short  metre  on  the  Procrustean  rack  of  a  long- 
drawn  tune.  The  result  was  like  this  :  — 

"  Thihfs  ihis  thehe  fohorest  prihiKimeheval ;  thehe 
murhurmuring  pihiiies  hahand  thehe  hehem- 
lohocks !  " 

At  a  quarter  past  eleven,  p.  M.,  we  reached 
Greenville,  (a  little  village  which  looks  as  if  it 
had  dripped  down  from  the  hills,  and  settled 
in  the  hollow  at  the  foot  of  the  lake,)  having 
accomplished  seventy-two  miles  in  eighteen 
hours.  The  tavern  was  totally  extinguished. 
The  driver  rapped  upon  the  bar-room  window, 
and  after  a  while  we  saw  heat-lightnings  of  un- 
successful matches  followed  by  a  low  grumble 
of  vocal  thunder,  which  I  am  afraid  took  the 
form  of  imprecation.  Presently  there  was  a 
great  success,  and  the  steady  blur  of  lighted 
tallow  succeeded  the  fugitive  brilliance  of  the 
pine.  A  hostler  fumbled  the  door  open,  and 
stoc-d  staring  at  but  not  seeing  us,  with  the 


A   MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL.  27 

sleep  sticking  out  all  over  him.  We  at  last 
contrived  to  launch  him,  more  like  ail  insensi- 
ble missile  than  an  intelligent  or  intelligible 
being,  at  the  slumbering  landlord,  who  came 
out  wide-awake,  and  welcomed  us  as  so  many 
half-dollars,  —  twenty-five  cents  each  for  bed, 
ditto  breakfast.  O  Shenstone,  Shenstone  ! 
The  only  roost  was  in  the  garret,  which  had 
been  made  into  a  single  room,'  and  contained 
eleven  double-beds,  ranged  along  the  walls. 
It  was  like  sleeping  in  a  hospital.  However, 
nice  customs  curtsy  to  eighteeu-hour  rides,  and 
we  slept. 

Saturday,  13M.  —  This  morning  I  performed 
my  toilet  in  the  bar-room,  where  there  was  an 
abundant  supply  of  water,  and  a  halo  of  inter- 
ested spectators.  After  a  sufficient  breakfast, 
we  embarked  on  the  little  steamer  Moosehead, 
and  were  soon  throbbing  up  the  lake.  The 
boat,  it  appeared,  had  been  chartered  by  a 
party,  this  not  being  one  of  her  regular  trips. 
Accordingly  we  were  mulcted  in  twice  the 
usual  fee,  the  philosophy  of  which  I  could  not 
understand.  However,  it  always  comes  easier 
to  us  to  comprehend  why  we  receive  than  why 


28  A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL. 

we  pay.  I  dare  say  it  was  quite  clear  to  the 
captain.  There  were  three  or  four  clearings 
on  the  western -shore  ;  but  after  passing  these, 
the  lake  became  wholly  primeval,  and  looked 
to  us  as  it  did  to  the  first  adventurous  French- 
man who  paddled  across  it.  Sometimes  a 
cleared  point  would  be  pink  with  the  blossom- 
ing willow-herb,  "  a  cheap  and  excellent  sub- 
stitute "  for  heather,  and,  like  all  such,  not 
quite  so  good  as  the  real  thing.  On  all  sides 
rose  deep-blue  mountains  of  remarkably  grace- 
ful outline,  and  more  fortunate  than  common 
in  their  names.  There  were  the  Big  and  Little 
Squaw,  the  Spencer  and  Lily-bay  Mountains. 
It  was  debated  whether  we  saw  Katahdin  or 
not  (perhaps  more  useful  as  an  intellectual 
exercise  than  the  assured  vision  would  have 
been),  and  presently  Mount  Kineo  rose  ab- 
ruptly before  us,  in  shape  not  unlike  the  island 
of  Capri.  Mountains  are  called  great  natural 
features,  and  why  they  should  not  retain  their 
names  long  enough  for  them  also  to  become 
naturalized,  it  is  hard  to  say.  Why  should 
every  new  surveyor  rechristen  them  with  the 
gubernatorial  patronymics  of  the  current  year  ? 


A    MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL.  29 

They  are  geological  noses,  and,  as  they  are 
aquiline  or  pug,  indicate  terrestrial  idiosyn- 
crasies. A  cosmical  physiognomist,  after  a 
glance  at  them,  will  draw  no  vague  inference 
as  to  the  character  of  the  country.  The  word 
nose  is  no  better  than  any  other  word;  but 
since  the  organ  has  got  that  name,  it  is  con- 
venient to  keep  it.  Suppose  we  had  to  label 
our  facial  prominences  every  season  with  the 
name  of  our  provincial  governor,  how  should 
we  like  it  ?  If  the  old  names  have  no  other 
meaning,  they  have  that  of  age ;  and,  after  all, 
meaning  is  a  plant  of  slow  growth,  as  every 
reader  of  Shakespeare  knows.  It  ^s  well 
enough  to  call  mountains  after  their  discover- 
ers, for  Nature  has  a  knack  of  throwing  doub- 
lets, and  somehow  contrives  it  that  discoverers 
have  good  names.  Pike's  Peak  is  a  curious 
hit  in  this  way.  But  these  surveyors'  names 
have  no  natural  stick  in  them.  They  remind 
0112  of  the  epithets  of  poetasters,  which  peel  off 
like  a  badly  gummed  postage-stamp.  The 
early  settlers  did  better,  and  there  is  some- 
thing pleasant  in  the  sound  of  Graylock,  Sad- 
dleback, and  Great  Haystack. 


30  A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL. 

"  I  love  those  names 
Wherewith  the  exiled  fanner  tames 
Nature  down  to  companionship 

With  his  old  world's  more  homely  mood, 
And  strives  the  shaggy  wild  to  clip 

With  arms  of  familiar  habitude." 

It  is  possible  that  Mount  Marcy  and  Mount 
Hitchcock  may  sound  as  well  hereafter  as  Hel- 
lespont and  Peloponnesus,  \vhen  the  heroes, 
their  namesakes,  have  become  mythic  with  an- 
tiquity. But  that  is  to  look  forward  a  great 
way.  I  am  no  fanatic  for  Indian  nomencla- 
ture, —  the  name  of  my  native  district  haviug 
been  P^gsgusset,  —  but  let  us  at  least  agree 
on  names  for  ten  years. 

There  were  a  couple  of  loggers  on  board, 
in  red  flannel  shirts,  and  with  rifles.  They 
were  the  first  I  had  seen,  and  I  was  interested 
in  their  appearance.  They  were  tall,  well- 
knit  men,  straight  as  Robin  Hood,  and  with  a 
quiet,  self-contained  look  that  pleased  me.  I 
fell  into  talk  with  one  of  them. 

"  Is  there  a  good  market  for  the  farmers 
here  in  the  woods  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  None  better.     They  can  sell  what  they 


A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL.  31 

raise  at  their  doors,  and  for  the  best  of  prices. 
The  lumberers  want  it  all,  and  more." 

"  It  must  be  a  lonely  life.  But  then  we  all 
have  to  pay  more  or  less  life  for  a  living." 

"  Well,  it  is  lonesome.  Should  n't  like  it. 
After  all,  the  best  crop  a  man  can  raise  is  a 
good  crop  of  society.  We  don't  live  none  too 
long,  anyhow ;  and  without  society  a  fellow 
could  n't  tell  mor  'n  half  the  time  whether  he 
was  alive  or  not." 

This  speech  gave  me  a  glimpse  into  the  life 
of  the  lumberers'  camp.  It  was  plain  that 
there  a  man  would  soon  find  out  how  much 
alive  he  was,  —  there  he  could  learn  to  esti- 
mate his  quality,  weighed  in  the  nicest  self- 
adjusting  balance.  The  best  arm  at  the.  axe 
or  the  paddle,  the  surest  eye  for  a  road  or  for 
the  weak  point  of  a.  jam,  the  steadiest  foot  upon 
the  squirming  log,  the  most  persuasive  voice 
to  the  tugging  oxen,  —  all  these  things  are 
rapidly  settled,  and  so  an  aristocracy  is  evolved 
from  this  democracy  of  the  woods,  for  good 
old  mother  Nature  speaks  Saxon  still,  and 
with  her  either  Canning  or  Kenning  means 
King. 


32  A   MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL. 

A  string  of  five  loons  was  flying  back  and 
forth  in  long,  irregular  zigzags,  uttering  at 
intervals  their  wild,  tremulous  cry,  which  al- 
ways seems  far  away,  like  the  last  faint  pulse 
of  echo  dying  among  the  hills,  and  which  is 
one  of  those  few  sounds  that,  instead  of  dis- 
turbing solitude,  only  deepen  and  confirm  it. 
On  our  inland  ponds  they  are  usually  seen  in 
pairs,  and  I  asked  if  it  were  common  to  meet 
five  together.  My  question  was  answered  by 
a  queer-looking  old  man,  chiefly  remarkable  for 
a  pair  of  enormous  cowhide  boots,  over  which 
large  bine  trousers  of  Crocking  strove  in  vain 
to  crowd  themselves. 

"Wahl,  't  ain't  ushil,"  said  he,  "and  it's 
called  a  sign  o'  rain  com  in',  that  is." 

"  Do  you  think  it  will  rain  ?  " 

With  the  caution  of  a  veteran  auftpf.r,  he 
evaded  a  direct  reply.  "Wahl,  they  du  say 
it 's  a  sign  o'  rain  comin',"  said  he. 

I  discovered  afterward  that  my  interlocutor 
was  Uncle  Zeb.  Formerly,  every  New  Eng- 
land town  had  its  representative  uncle.  He 
was  not  a  pawnbroker,  but  some  elderly  man 
who,  for  want  of  more  defined  family  ties,  had 


'  Walil,  't  ain't  ushil,'  said  be." 


A   MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL.  35 

gradually  assumed  this  avuncular  relation  to 
the  community,  inhabiting  the  border-land  be- 
tween respectability  and  the  almshouse,  with 
no  regular  calling,  but  working  at  haying,  wood- 
sawing,  whitewashing,  associated  with  the  de- 
mise of  pigs  and  the  ailments  of  cattle,  and 
possessing  as  much  patriotism  as  might  be  im- 
plied in  a  devoted  attachment  to  "  New  Eng- 
land "  —  with  a  good  deal  of  sugar  and  very 
little  water  in  it.  Uncle  Zeb  was  a  good 
specimen  of  this  palseozoic  class,  extinct  among 
us  for  the  most  part,  or  surviving,  like  the 
Dodo,  in  the  Botany  Bays  of  society.  He  was 
ready  to  contribute  (somewhat  muddily)  to  all 
general  conversation ;  but  his  chief  topics 
were  his  boots  and  the  'Roostick  war.  Upon 
the  lowlands  and  levels  of  ordinary  palaver  he 
would  make  rapid  and  unlooked-for  incursions ; 
but,  provision  failing,  he  would  retreat  to  these 
two  fastnesses,  whence  it  was  impossible  to 
dislodge  him,  and  to  which  he  knew  innumer- 
able passes  and  short  cuts  quite  beyond  the 
conjecture  of  common  woodcraft.  His  mind 
opened  naturally  to  these  two  subjects,  like  a 
book  to  some  favorite  passage.  As  the  ear  ac- 


36  A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL. 

customs  itself  to  any  sound  recurring  regularly, 
such  as  the  ticking  of  a  clock,  and,  without  a 
conscious  effort  of  attention,  takes  no  impres- 
sion from  it  whatever,  so  does  the  mind  find  a 
natural  safeguard  against  this  pendulum  species 
of  discourse,  and  performs  its  duties  in  the  par- 
liament by  an  unconscious  reflex  action,  like 
the  beating  of  the  heart  or  the  movement  of 
the  lungs.  If  talk  seemed  to  be  flagging,  our 
Uncle  would  put  the  heel  of  one  boot  upon  the 
toe  of  the  other,  to  bring  it  within  point-blank 
range,  and  say,  "  Wahl,  I  stump  the  Devil  him- 
self to  make  that  'ere  boot  hurt  my  foot,"  leav- 
ing us  in  doubt  whether  it  were  the  virtue  of 
the  foot  or  its  case  which  set  at  nought  the 
wiles  of  the  adversary ;  or,  looking  up  sud- 
denly, he  would  exclaim,  "  Wahl,  we  eat  some 
beans  to  the  'Roostick  war,  I  tell  you!" 
When  his  poor  old  clay  was  wet  with  gin, 
his  thoughts  and  words  acquired  a  rank  flavor 
from  it,  as  from  too  strong  a  fertilizer.  At 
such  times,  too,  his  fancy  commonly  reverted 
to  a  pre-historic  period  of  his  life,  when  he 
singly  had  settled  all  the  surrounding  country, 
subdued  the  Injuns  and  other  wild  animals, 
and  named  all  the  towns. 


A  MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL.  37 

We  talked  of  the  winter-camps  and  the  life 
there.  "  The  best  thing  is,"  said  our  uncle, 
"  to  hear  a  log  squeal  thru  the  suo\v.  Git  a 
good,  cole,  frosty  mornin',  in  Febuary  say,  an' 
take  an'  hitch  the  critters  on  to  a  log  that  '11 
scale  seven  thousan',  an'  it  '11  squeal  as  pooty 
as  an'thin'  you  ever  hearu,  I  tell  you." 

A  pause. 

"  Lessee,  —  seen  Gal  Hutchius  lately  ?" 

"No." 

"  Seems  to  me  's  though  I  hed  n't  seen  Cal 
sence  the  'Roostick  war.  Walil,"  etc.,  etc. 

Another  pause. 

"  To  look  at  them  boots  you  'd  think  they 
was  too  large ;  but  kind  o'  git  your  foot  into 
'em,  and  they  're  as  easy  's  a  glove."  (I  ob- 
served that  he  never  seemed  really  to  get  his 
foot  in,  —  there  was  always  a  qualifying  kind 
0'.)  "  Wahl,  my  foot  can  play  in  'em  like  a 
young  hedgehog." 

By  this  time  we  had  arrived  at  Kineo,  —  a 
flourishing  village  of  one  house,  the  tavern 
kept  by  'Squire  Barrows.  The  'Squire  is  a 
large,  hearty  man,  with  a  voice  as  clear  and 
strong  as  a  northwest  wind,  and  a  great  laugh 


38  A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL. 

suitable  to  it.  His  table  is  neat  and  well  sup- 
plied, and  he  waits  upou  it  himself  in  the  good 
old  landlordly  fashion.  One  may  be  much 
better  off  here,  to  my  thinking,  than  in  one  of 
those  gigantic  Columbaria  which  are  foisted 
upon  us  patient  Americans  for  hotels,  and 
where  one  is  packed  away  in  a  pigeon-hole  so 
near  the  heavens  that,  if  the  comet  should  flirt 
its  tail,  (no  unlikely  thing  in  the  month  of  flies,) 
one  would  be  in  danger  of  being  brushed 
away.  Here  one  does  not  pay  his  diurnal 
three  dollars  for  an  undivided  five-hundredth 
part  of  the  pleasure  of  looking  at  gilt  ginger- 
bread. Here  one's  relations  are  with  the  mon- 
arch himself,  and  one  is  not  obliged  to  wait 
the  slow*  leisure  of  those  "  attentive  clerks  " 
whose  praises  are  sung  by  thankful  deadheads, 
and  to  whom  the  slave  who  pays  may  feel  as 
much  gratitude  as  might  thrill  the  heart  of  a 
brown-paper  parcel  toward  the  express-man 
who  labels  it  and  chucks  it  under  his  counter. 
Sunday,  \±th.  —  The  loons  were  right. 
About  midnight  it  began  to  rain  in  earnest, 
and  did  not  hold  up  till  about  ten  o'clock  this 
morning.  "This  is  a  Maine  dew,"  said  a 


A    MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL.  39 

shaggy  woodman  cheerily,  as  he  shook  the  wa- 
ter out  of  his  wide-awake,  "  if  it  don't  look  out 
sharp,  it  '11  begin  to  rain  afore  it  thinks  on  't." 
The  day  was  mostly  spent  within  doors ;  but 
I  found  good  and  intelligent  society.  We 
should  have  to  be  shipwrecked  on  Juan  Fer- 
nandez not  to  find  men  who  knew  more  than 
we.  Iii  these  travelling  encounters  one  is 
thrown  upon  his  own  resources,  and  is  worth 
just  what  he  carries  about  him.  The  social 
currency  of  home,  the  smooth- worn  coin  which 
passes  freely  among  friends  and  neighbors,  is 
of  no  account.  We  are  thrown  back  upon  the 
old  system  of  barter ;  and,  even  with  savages, 
we  bring  away  only  as  much  of  the  wild  wealth 
of  the  woods  as  we  carry  beads  of  thought  and 
experience,  strung  one  by  one  in  painful  years, 
to  pay  for  them  with.  A  useful  old  jackknife 
will  buy  more  than  the  daintiest  Louis  Quinze 
paper-folder  fresh  from  Paris.  Perhaps  the 
kind  of  intelligence  one  gets  in  these  out-of-the- 
way  places  is  the  best,  —  where  one  takes  a 
fresh  man  after  breakfast  instead  of  the  damp 
morning  paper,  and  where  the  magnetic  tele- 
graph of  human  sympathy  flashes  swift  news 
from  brain  to  braiii. 


40  A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL. 

Meanwhile,  at  a  pinch,  to-morrow's  weailier 
can  be  discussed.  The  augury  from  the  flight 
of  birds  is  favorable, — the  loons  no  longer 
prophesying  rain.  The  wind  also  is  hauling 
round  to  the  right  quarter,  according  to  some, 
to  the  wrong,  if  we  are  to  believe  others. 
Each  man  has  his  private  barometer  of  hope, 
the  mercury  in  which  is  more  or  less  sensitive, 
and  the  opinion  vibrant  with  its  rise  or  fall. 
Mine  has  an  index  which  can  be  moved  me- 
chanically. I  fixed  it  at  set  fair,  and  resigned 
myself.  I  read  an  old  volume  of  the  Patent- 
Office  Report  on  Agriculture,  and  stored  away 
a  beautiful  pile  of  facts  and  observations  for 
future  use,  which  the  current  of  occupation, 
at  its  first  freshet,  would  sweep  quietly  off  to 
blank  oblivion.  Practical  application  is  the 
only  mordant  which  will  set  things  in  the 
memory.  Study,  without  it,  is  gymnastics, 
and  not  work,  which  alone  will  get  intellectual 
bread.  One  learns  more  metaphysics  from  a 
single  temptation  than  from  all  the  philoso- 
phers. It  is  curious,  though,  how  tyrannical 
the  habit  of  reading  is,  and  what  shifts  we 
make  to  escape  thinking.  There  is  no  bore 


A    MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL.  41 

we  dread  being  left  alone  with  so  much  as  our 
own  minds.  I  have  seen  a  sensible  man  study 
a  stale  newspaper  in  a  country  tavern,  and 
husband  it  as  lie  would  an  old  shoe  on  a  raft 
after  shipwreck.  Why  not  try  a  bit  of  hiber- 
nation ?  There  are  few  brains  that  would  not 
be  better  for  living  on  their  own  fat  a  little 
while.  With  these  reflections,  I,  notwith- 
standing, spent  the  afternoon  over  my  Report. 
If  our  own  experience  is  of  so  little  use  to  us, 
what  a  dolt  is  he  who  recommends  to  man  or 
nation  the  experience  of  others  !  Like  the 
mantle  in  the  old  ballad,  it  is  always  too  short 
or  too  long,  and  exposes  or  trips  us  up.  "  Keep 
out  of  that  candle,"  says  old  Father  Miller, 
"  or  you  '11  get  a  singeing."  "  Pooh,  pooh, 
father,  I  've  been  dipped  in  the  new  asbestos 
preparation,"  and  frozz  !  it  is  all  over  with 
young  Hopeful.  How  many  warnings  have 
been  drawn  from  Pretorian  bands,  and  Janiza- 
ries, and  Mamelukes,  to  make  Napoleon  III. 
impossible  in  1851  !  I  found  myself  thinking 
the  same  thoughts  over  again,  when  we  walked 
later  on  the  beach  and  picked  up  pebbles. 
The  old  time-ocean  throws  upon  its  shores 


42  A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL. 

just  such  rounded  and  polished  results  of  the 
eternal  turmoil,  but  we  only  see  the  beauty  of 
those  we  have  got  the  headache  in  stooping 
for  ourselves,  and  wonder  at  the  dull  brown 
bits  of  common  stone  with  which  our  comrades 
have  stuffed  their  pockets.  Afterwards  this 

little  fable  came  of  it. 

\ 

DOCTOR  LOBSTER. 

A  PERCH,  who  had  the  -toothache,  once 
Thus  moaned,  like  any  human  dunce : 
"  Why  must  great  souls  exhaust  so  soon 
Life's  thin  and  unsubstantial  boon  ? 
Existence  on  such  sculpin  terms,  — 
Their  vulgar  loves  and  hard-won  worms,  — 
"What  is  it  all  but  dross  to  me, 
"Whose  nature  craves  a  larger  sea  ; 
"Whose  inches,  six  from  head  to  tail, 
Enclose  the  spirit  of  a  whale; 
"Who,  if  great  baits  were  still  to  win, 
By  watchful  eye  and  fearless  fin 
Might  with  the  Zodiac's  awful  twain 
Room  for  a  third  immortal  gain  ? 
Better  the  crowd's  unthinking  plan,  — 
The  hook,  the  jerk,  the  frying-pan  ! 
O  Death,  thou  ever  roaming  shark, 
Ingulf  me  in  eternal  dark !  " 


A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL.  43 

The  speech  was  cut  in  two  by  flight : 
A  real  shark  had  come  in  sight ; 
No  metaphoric  monster,  one 
It  soothes  despair  to  call  upon, 
But  stealthy,  sidelong,  grim,  I  wis, 
A  bit  of  downright  Nemesis  ; 
While  it  recovered  from  the  shock, 
Our  fish  took  shelter  'neath  a  rock : 
This  was  an  ancient  lobster's  house, 
A  lobster  of  prodigious  nous, 
So  old  that  barnacles  had  spread 
Their  white  encampments  o'er  its  head, 
And  of  experience  so  stupend, 
His  claws  were  blunted  at  the  end, 
Turning  life's  iron  pages  o'er, 
That  shut  and  can  be  oped  no  more. 

Stretching  a  hospitable  claw, 

"  At  once,"  said  he,  "  the  point  I  saw ; 

My  dear  young  friend,  your  case  I  rue, 

Your  great-great-grandfather  I  knew; 

He  was  a  tried  and  tender  friend 

I  know,  —  I  ate  him  in  the  end : 

In  this  vile  sea  a  pilgrim  long, 

Still  my  sight  's  good,  my  memory  strong ; 

The  only  sign  that  age  is  near 

Is  a  slight  deafness  in  this  ear ; 

I  understand  your  case  as  well 

As  this  my  old  familiar  shell; 


44  A   MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL. 

This  sorrow  's  a  new-fangled  notion, 
Come  in  since  first  I  knew  the  ocean ; 
"We  had  no  radicals,  nor  crimes, 
Nor  lobster-pots,  in  good  old  times ; 
Your  traps  and  nets  and  hooks  we  owe 
To  Messieurs  Louis  Blanc  and  Co. ; 
I  say  to  all  my  sons  and  daughters, 
Shun  Red  Republican  hot  waters ; 
No  lobster  ever  cast  his  lot 
Among  the  reds,  but  went  to  pot : 
Your  trouble  's  in  the  jaw,  you  said  ? 
Come,  let  me  just  nip  off  your  head, 
And,  when  a  new  one  comes,  the  pain 
"Will  never  trouble  you  again  : 
Nay,  nay,  fear  naught :  't  is  nature's  law. 
Four  times  I've  lost  this  starboard  claw; 
And  still,  erelong,  another  grew, 
Good  as  the  old,  —  and  better  too  !  " 

The  perch  consented,  and  next  day 
An  osprey,  marketing  that  way, 
Picked  up  a  fish  without  a  head, 
Floating  with  belly  up,  stone  dead. 

MORAL. 

Sharp  are  the  teeth  of  ancient  saws, 
And  sauce  for  goose  is  gander's  sauce  ; 
But  perch's  heads  are  n't  lobster's  claws. 


A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL.  45 

Monday,  15M. — The  morning  was  fine, 
and  we  were  called  at  four  o'clock.  At  the 
moment  my  door  was  knocked  at,  I  was 
mounting  a  giraffe  with  that  charming  nil  ad- 
mirari  which  characterizes  dreams,  to  visit 
Prester  John.  Rat-tat-tat-tat !  upon  my  door 
and  upon  the  horn  gate  of  dreams  also.  I 
remarked  to  my  skowhegan  (the  Tatar  for 
giraffe-driver)  that  I  was  quite  sure  the  ani- 
mal had  the  raps,  a  common  disease  among 
them,  for  I  heard  a  queer  knocking  noise  in- 
side him.  It  is  the  sound  of  his  joints,  0 
Tambourgi !  (an  Oriental  term  of  reverence,) 
and  proves  him  to  be  of  the  race  of  El  Kei- 
rat.  Rat-tat-tat-too  !  and  I  lost  my  dinner  at 
the  Prester' s,  embarking  for  a  voyage  to  the 
Northwest  Carry  instead.  Never  use  the 
word  canoe,  my  dear  Storg,  if  you  wish  to 
retain  your  self-respect.  Birch  is  the  term 
among  us  backwoodsmen.  I  never  knew  it 
till  yesterday;  but,  like  a  true  philosopher,  I 
made  it  appear  as  if  I  had  been  intimate  with 
it  from  childhood.  The  rapidity  with  which 
the  human  mind  levels  itself  to  the  standard 
around  it  gives  us  the  most  pertinent  warning 


46  A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL. 

as  to  the  company  we  keep.  It  is  as  hard 
for  most  characters  to  stay  at  their  own  aver- 
age poiiit  in  all  companies,  as  for  a  thermome- 
ter to  say  65°  for  twenty-four  hours  together. 
I  like  this  in  our  friend  Johannes  Taurus,  that 
he  carries  everywhere  and  maintains  his  in- 
sular temperature,  and  will  have  everything 
accommodate  itself  to  that.  Shall  I  confess 
that  this  morning  I  would  rather  have  broken 
the  moral  law,  than  have  endangered  the  equi- 
poise of  the  birch  by  my  awkwardness  ?  that 
I  should  have  been  prouder  of  a  compliment 
to  my  paddling,  than  to  have  had  both  my 
guides  suppose  me  the  author  of  Hamlet  ? 
Well,  Cardinal  Richelieu  used  to  jump  over 
chairs. 

We  were  to  paddle  about  twenty  miles  ;  but 
we  made  it  rather  more  by  crossing  and  re- 
crossing  the  lake.  Twice  we  lauded,  — onco 
at  a  camp,  where  we  found  the  cook  alone, 
baking  bread  and  gingerbread.  Monsieur 
Soyer  would  have  been  startled  a  little  by  this 
shaggy  professor,  —  this  Pre-Raphaelite  of 
cookery.  He  represented  the  salaratus  period 
of  the  art,  and  his  bread  was  of  a  brilliant  yel- 


A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL.  47 

low,  like  those  cakes  tinged  with  saffron,  which 
hold  out  so  long  against  time  and  the  flies  in 
little  water-side  shops  of  seaport  towns,  — 
dingy  extremities  of  trade  fit  to  moulder  on 
Lethe  wharf.  His  water  was  better,  squeezed 
out  of  ice-cold  granite  in  the  neighboring 
mountains,  and  sent  through  subterranean 
ducts  to  sparkle  up  by  the  door  of  the  camp. 
"  There 's  nothin'  so  sweet  an'  hulsome  as 
your  real  spring  water,"  said  Uncle  Zeb,  "  git 
it  pure.  But  it  's  dreffle  hard  to  git  it  that 
ain't  got  sunthin'  the  matter  of  it.  Snow- 
water '11  burn  a  man's  inside  out,  —  I  lamed 
that  to  the  'Roostick  war,  —  and  the  snow 
lays  terrible  long  on  some  o'  thes'ere  hills. 
Me  an'  Eb  Stiles  was  up  old  Kl  ahdn  once  jest 
about  this  time  o'  year,  an'  we  come  acrost  a 
kind  o'  holler  like,  as  full  o'  snow  as  your 
stockin  's  full  o'  your  foot.  /  see  it  fust,  an' 
took  an'  rammed  a  settin'-pole ;  wahl,  it  was 
all  o'  twenty  foot  into  't,  an'  could  n't  fin'  no 
bottom.  I  dunno  as  there  's  snow-water 
enough  in  this  to  do  no  hurt.  I  don't  some- 
how seem  to  think  that  real  spring- water 's  so 
plenty  as  it  used  to  be."  And  Uncle  Zeb,  with 


48  A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL. 

perhaps  a  little  over-refinement  of  scrupulosity, 
applied  his  lips  to  the  Ethiop  ones  of  a  bottle 
of  raw  gin,  with  a  kiss  that  drew  out  its  very 
soul,  —  a  basia  that  Secuudus  might  have 
sung.  He  must  have  been  a  wonderful  judge 
of  water,  for  he  analyzed  this,  and  detected  its 
latent  snow  simply  by  his  eye,  and  without  the 
clumsy  process  of  tasting.  I  could  not  help 
thinking  that  he  had  made  the  desert  his  dwell- 
ing-place  chiefly  in  order  to  enjoy  the  minis- 
trations of  this  one  fair  spirit  unmolested. 

We  pushed  on.  Little  islands  loomed  trem- 
bling between  sky  and  water,  like  hanging 
gardens.  Gradually  the  filmy  trees  denned 
themselves,  the  aerial  enchantment  lost  its 
potency,  and  we  came  up  with  common  prose 
islands  that  had  so  late  been  magical'  and  po- 
etic. The  old  story  of  the  attained  and  uuat- 
tained.  About  noon  we  reached  the  head  of 
the  lake,  and  took  possession  of  a  deserted 
wont/en,  in  which  to  cook  and  eat  our  dinner. 
No  Jew,  I  am  sure,  can  have  a  more  thorough 
dislike  of  salt  pork  than  I  have  in  a  normal 
stat?,  yet  I  had  already  eaten  it  raw  with  hard 
bread  for  lunch,  and  relished  it  keenly.  We 


"We  sat  round  and  ate  thankfully.' 


A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL.  51 

soon  had  our  tea-kettle  over  the  fire,  and  before 
long  the  cover  was  chattering  with  the  escaping 
steam,  which  had  thus  vainly  begged  of  all  men 
to  be  saddled  and  bridled,  till  James  Watt  one 
day  happened  to  overhear  it.  One  of  our 
guides  shot  three  Canada  grouse,  and  these 
were  turned  slowly  between  the  fire  and  a  bit 
of  salt  pork,  which  dropped  fatness  upon  them 
as  it  fried.  Although  my  fingers  were  certainly 
not  made  before  knives  and  forks,  yet  they 
served  as  a  convenient  substitute  for  those 
more  ancient  inventions.  We  sat  round,  Turk- 
fashion,  and  ate  thankfully,  while  a  party  of 
aborigines  of  the  Mosquito  tribe,  who  had 
camped  in  the  wongen  before  we  arrived,  dined 
upon  us.  I  do  not  know  what  the  British 
Protectorate  of  the  Mosquitoes  amounts  to ; 
but,  as  I  squatted  there  at  the  mercy  of  these 
blood-thirsty  savages,  I  no  longer  wondered 
that  the  classic  Everett  had  been  stung  into  a 
willingness  for  war  on  the  question. 

"  This  'ere  'd  be  about  a  complete  place  for 
a  camp,  ef  there  was  on'y  a  spring  o'  sweet 
water  handy.  Frizzled  pork  goes  wal,  don't 
it  ?  Yes,  an'  sets  wal,  too,"  said  Uncle  Zeb, 


52  A   MOOSEHEAD   JOURXAL. 

and  lie  again  tilted  his  bottle,  which  rose 
nearer  and  nearer  to  an  angle  of  forty-five  at 
every  gurgle.  He  then  broached  a  curious 
dietetic  theory :  "  The  reason  we  take  salt 
pork  along  is  cos  it  packs  handy  :  you  git  the 
greatest  amount  o'  board  in  the  smallest  com- 
pass, —  let  alone  that  it 's  more  nourishin' 
than  an'thin'  else.  It  kind  o'  don't  disgest 
so  quick,  but  stays  by  ye,  anourishiu'  ye  all 
the  while. 

"  A  feller  can  live  wal  on  frizzled  pork  an* 
good  spring- water,  git  it  good.  To  the  'Roos- 
tick  war  we  did  n't  ask  for  nothin'  better,  — 
on'y  beans."  (Tilt,  tilt,  gurgle,  gurgled) 
Then,  with  an  apparent  feeling  of  inconsis- 
tency, "  But  then,  come  to  git  used  to  a  par- 
ticular kind  o'  spring-water,  an'  it  makes  a 
feller  hard  to  suit.  Most  all  sorts  o'  water 
taste  kind  o'  zV/sipid  away  from  home.  Now, 
I  've  gut  a  spring  to  my  place  that 's  as  sweet 
—  wahl,  it 's  as  sweet  as  maple  sap.  A  feller 
acts  about  water  jest  as  he  does  about  a  pair 
o'  boots.  It's  all  on  it  in  gittin'  wonted. 
Now,  them  boots,"  etc.,  etc.  (Gurgle,  gurgle, 
gurgle,  smack  f) 


A   MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL.  53 

All  this  while  he  was  packing  away  the 
remains  of  the  pork  and  hard  bread  in  two 
large  firkins.  This  accomplished,  we  re-em- 
barked, our  uncle  on  his  way  to  the  birch 
essaying  a  kind  of  song  in  four  or  five  parts, 
of  which  the  words  were  hilarious  and  the 
tune  profoundly  melancholy,  and  which  was 
finished,  and  the  rest  of  his  voice  apparently 
jerked  out  of  him  in  one  sharp  falsetto  note, 
by  his  tripping  over  the  root  of  a  tree.  We 
paddled  a  short  distance  up  a  brook  which 
came  into  the  lake  smoothly  through  a  little 
meadow  not  far  off.  We  soon  reached  the 
Northwest  Carry,  and  our  guide,  pointing 
Ilirough  the  woods,  said:  "That's  the  Can- 
nydy  road.  You  can  travel  that  clearn  to 
Kebeck,  a  hundred  an'  twenty  mile," — a 
privilege  of  which  I  respectfully  declined  to 
avail  myself.  The  offer,  however,  remains 
open  to  the  public.  The  Carry  is  called  two 
miles  ;  but  this  is  the  estimate  of  somebody 
who  had  nothing  to  lug.  I  had  a  headache 
and  all  my  baggage,  which,  with  a  traveller's 
instinct,  I  had  brought  with  me.  (P.  S.  — 
I  did  not  even  take  the  keys  out  of  my  pocket, 


54  A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL. 

and  both  my  bags  were  wet  through  before 
I  came  back.)  My  estimate  of  the  distance 
is  eighteen  thousand  six  hundred  and  seventy- 
four  miles  and  three  quarters,  —  the  fraction 
being  the  part  left  to  be  travelled  after  one 
of  my  companions  most  kindly  insisted  on 
relieving  me  of  my  heaviest  bag.  I  know 
very  well  that  the  ancient  Roman  soldiers 
used  to  carry  sixty  pounds'  weight,  and  all 
that;  but  I  am  not,  and  never  shall  be,  an 
ancient  Roman  soldier,  —  no,  not  even  in  the 
miraculous  Thundering  Legion.  Uncle  Zeb 
slung  the  two  provender  firkins  across  his 
shoulder,  and  trudged  along,  grumbling  that 
"  he  never  see  sech  a  coutrairy  pair  as  them." 
He  had  begun  upon  a  second  bottle  of  his 
"particular  kind  o'  spring- water,"  and,  at 
every  rest,  the  gurgle  of  this  peripatetic  foun- 
tain might  be  heard,  followed  by  a  smack,  a 
fragment  of  mosaic  song,  or  a  confused  clatter 
with  the  cowhide  boots,  being  an  arbitrary 
symbol,  intended  to  represent  the  festive 
.dance.  Christian's  pack  gave  him  not  half 
so  much  trouble  as  the  firkins  gave  Uncle 
Zeb.  It  grew  harder  and  harder  to  sling 


"  He  had  begun  on  a  second  bottle." 


A    MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL.  57 

them,  and  with  every  fresh  gulp  of  the  Bata- 
viau  elixir,  they  got  heavier.  Or  rather,  the 
truth  was,  that  his  hat  grew  heavier,  in  which 
he  was  carrying  on  an  extensive  manufac- 
ture of  bricks  without  straw.  At  last  affairs 
reached  a  crisis,  and  a  particularly  favorable 
pitch  offering,  with  a  puddle  at  the  foot  of  it, 
even  the  boots  afforded  no  sufficient  ballast, 
and  away  went  our  uncle,  the  satellite  firkins 
accompanying  faithfully  his  headlong  flight. 
Did  ever  exiled  monarch  or  disgraced  minis- 
ter find  the  cause  of  his  fall  in  himself?  Is 
there  not  always  a  strawberry  at  the  bottom 
of  our  cup  of  life,  on  which  we  can  lay  all 
the  blame  of  our  deviations  from  the  straight 
path  ?  Till  now  Uncle  Zeb  had  contrived  to 
give  a  gloss  of  volition  to  smaller  stumblings 
and  gyrations,  by  exaggerating  them  into  an 
appearance  of  playful  burlesque.  But  the 
present  case  was  beyond  any  such  subterfuges. 
He  held  a  bed  of  justice  where  he  sat,  and 
then  arose  slowly,  with  a  stern  determination 
of  vengeance  stiffening  every  muscle  of  his 
face.  But  what  would  he  select  as  the  cul- 
prit ?  "  It 's  that  cussed  firkin,"  he  mumbled 


58  A   MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL. 

to  himself.  "I  never  knowed  a  firkin  cair 
•on  so, —  no,  not  in  the  'Roostehicick  war. 
.There,  go  long,  will  ye  ?  and  don't  come  back 
till  you've  lamed  how  to  walk  with  a  genel- 
man  !  "  And,  seizing  the  unhappy  scapegoat 
by  the  bail,  he  hurled  it  into  the  forest.  It 
is  a  curious  circumstance,  that  it  was  not  the 
firkin  containing  the  bottle  which  was  thus 
condemned  to  exile. 

The  end  of  the  Carry  was  reached  at  last, 
and,  as  we  drew  near  it,  we  heard  a  sound  of 
shouting  and  laughter.  It  came  from  a  party 
of  men  making  hay  of  the  wild  grass  in  Se- 
boomok  meadows,  which  lie  around  Seboomok 
pond,  into  which  the  Carry  empties  itself. 
Their  camp  was  near,  and  our  two  hunters 
set  out  for  it,  leaving  us  seated  in  the  birch  on 
the  plashy  border  of  the  pond.  The  repose 
was  perfect.  Another  heaven  hallowed  and 
deepened  the  polished  lake,  and  through  that 
nether  world  the  fish-hawk's  double  floated 
with  balanced  wings,  or,  wheeling  suddenly, 
flashed  his  whitened  breast  against  the  sun. 
As  the  clattering  kingfisher  flew  unsteadily 
across,  and  seemed  to  push  his  heavy  head 


A   MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL.  59 

along  with  ever-renewing  effort,  a  visionary 
mate  flitted  from  downward  tree  to  tree  below. 
Some  tall  alders  shaded  us  from  the  sun,  in 
whose  yellow  afternoon  light  the  drowsy  for- 
est was  steeped,  giving  out  that  wholesome 
resinous  perfume,  almost  the  only  warm  odor 
which  it  is  refreshing  to  breathe.  The  tame 
haycocks  in  the  midst  of  the  wildness  gave  one 
a  pleasant  reminiscence  of  home,  like  hearing 
one's  native  tongue  in  a  strange  country. 

Presently  our  hunters  came  back,  bringing 
with  them  a  tall,  thin,  active-looking  man, 
witli  black  eyes,  that  glanced  unconsciously 
on  all  sides,  like  one  of  those  spots  of  sunlight 
which  a  child  dances  up  and  down  the  street 
with  a  bit  of  looking-glass.  This  was  M.,  the 
captain  of  the  hay-makers,  a  famous  river- 
driver,  and  who  was  to  have  fifty  men  under 
him  next  winter.  I  could  now  understand 
that  sleepless  vigilance  of  eye.  He  had  con- 
sented to  take  two  of  our  party  in  his  birch  to 
search  for  moose.  A  quick,  nervous,  decided 
man,  he  got  them  into  the  birch,  and  was  off 
instantly,  without  a  superfluous  word.  He  evi- 
dently looked  upon  them  as  he  would  upon  a 


60  A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL. 

couple  of  logs  which  he  was  to  deliver  at  a 
•  certain  place.  Indeed,  I  doubt  if  life  and  the 
world  presented  themselves  to  Napier  himself 
in  a  more  logarithmic  way.  His  only  thought 
was  to  do  the  immediate  duty  well,  and  to  pilot 
his  particular  raft  down  the  crooked  stream  of 
life  to  the  ocean  beyond.  The  birch  seemed  to 
feel  him  as  an  inspiring  soul,  and  slid  away 
straight  and  swift  for  the  outlet  of  the  pond. 
As  he  disappeared  under  the  overarching  alders 
of  the  brook,  our  two  hunters  could  not  re- 
press a  grave  and  measured  applause.  There 
is  never  any  extravagance  among  these  wood- 
men ;  their  eye,  accustomed  to  reckoning  the 
number  of  feet  which  a  tree  will  scale,  is  rapid 
and  close  in  its  guess  of  the  amount  of  stuff"  in 
a  man.  It  was  laudari  a  laudato,  however, 
for  they  themselves  were  accounted  good  men 
in  a  birch.  I  was  amused,  in  talking  with 
them  about  him,  to  meet  with  an  instance  of 
that  tendency  of  the  human  mind  to  assign 
some  utterly  improbable  reason  for  gifts  which 
seem  unaccountable.  After  due  praise,  one  of 
them  said,  "  I  guess  he  's  got  some  Injun  in 
him,"  although  I  knew  very  well  that  the 


A   MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL.  61 

speaker  Lad  a  thorough  contempt  for  the 
red-man,  mentally  and  physically.  Here  was 
mythology  in  a  small  way, — the  same  that 
under  more  favorable  auspices  hatched  Helen 
out  of  an  egg  arid  gave  Merlin  an  Incubus  for 
a  father.  I  was  pleased  with  all  I  saw  of 
M.  He  was  in  his  narrow  sphere  a  true  avag 
ai/Speoi/,  and  the  ragged  edges  of  his  old  hut 
seemed  to  become  coronated  as  I  looked  at 
him.  He  impressed  me  as  a  man  really  edu- 
cated, —  that  is,  with  his  aptitudes  drawn  out 
and  ready  for  use.  He  was  A.  M.  and  LL.  D. 
in  Woods  College,  —  Axe-master  and  Doctor 
of  Logs.  Are  not  our  educations  commonly 
like  a  pile  of  books  laid  over  a  plant  in  a  pot  ? 
The  compressed  nature  struggles  through  at 
every  crevice,  but  can  never  get  the  cramp 
aud  stunt  out  of  it.  We  spend  all  our  youth 
in  building  a  vessel  for  our  voyage  of  life,  and 
set  forth  with  streamers  flying;  but  the  mo- 
ment we  come  nigh  the  great  loadstone  moun- 
tain of  our  proper  destiny,  out  leap  all  our 
carefully-driven  bolts  and  nails,  and  we  get 
many  a  mouthful  of  good  salt  brine,  and  many 
a  buffet  of  the  rough  water  of  experience,  be- 
fore we  secure  the  bare  right  to  live. 


62  A   MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL. 

"We  now  entered  the  outlet,  a  long-drawn 
aisle  of  alder,  on  each  side  of  which  spired  tall 
firs,  spruces,  and  white  cedars.  The  motion 
of  the  birch  reminded  me  of  the  gondola,  and 
they  represent  among  water-craft  the  felidte, 
the  cat-tribe,  stealthy,  silent,  treacherous,  and 
preying  by  night.  I  closed  my  eyes,  and 
strove  to  fancy  myself  in  the  dumb  city,  whose 
only  horses  are  the  bronze  ones  of  St.  Mark. 
But  Nature  would  allow  no  rival,  and  bent 
down  an  alder-bough  to  brush  my  cheek  and 
recall  me.  Only  the  robin  sings  in  the  emerald 
chambers  of  these  tall  sylvan  palaces,  and  the 
squirrel  leaps  from  hanging  balcony  to  balcony. 

The  rain  which  the  loons  foreboded  had 
raised  the  west  branch  of  the  Penobscot  so 
much,  that  a  strong  current  was  setting  back 
into  the  pond  ;  and,  when  at  last  we  brushed 
through  into  the  river,  it  was  full  to  the  brim, 
^-  too  full  for  moose,  the  hunters  said.  Rivers 
with  low  banks  have  always  the  compensation 
of  giving  a  sense  of  entire  fulness.  The  sun 
sank  behind  its  horizon  of  pines,  whose  pointed 
summits  notched  the  rosy  west  in  an  endless 
black  sierra.  At  the  same  moment  the  golden 


A   MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL.  63 

moon  swung  slowly  up  in  the  east,  like  the 
other  scale  of  that  Homeric  balance  in  which 
Zeus  weighed  the  deeds  of  men.  Sunset  and 
moonrise  at  once!  Adam  had  no  more  in 
Eden  —  except  the  head  of  Eve  upon  his 
shoulder.  The  stream  was  so  smooth,  that  the 
floating  logs  we  met  seemed  to  hang  in  a  glow- 
ing atmosphere,  the  shadow-half  being  as  real 
as  the  solid.  And  gradually  the  mind  was 
etherized  to  a  like  dreamy  placidity,  till  fact 
and  fancy,  the  substance  and  the  image,  float- 
ing on  the  current  of  reverie,  became  but  as 
the  upper  and  under  halves  of  one  unreal 
reality. 

In  the  west  still  lingered  a  pale-green  light. 
I  do  not  know  whether  it  be  from  greater 
familiarity,  but  it  always  seems  to  me  that  the 
pinnacles  of  pine-trees  make  an  edge  to  the 
landscape  which  tells  better  against  the  twi- 
light, or  the  fainter  dawn  before  the  rising 
moon,  than  the  rounded  and  cloud-cumulus 
outline  of  hard-wood  trees. 

After  paddling  a  couple  of  miles,  we  found 
the  arbored  mouth  of  the  little  Malahoodus 
River,  famous  for  moose.  We  had  been  on 


64  A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL. 

the  look-out  for  it,  and  I  was  amused  to  hear 
one  of  the  hunters  say  to  the  other,  to  assure 
himself  of  his  familiarity  with  the  spot,  "  You 
drove  the  West  Branch  last  spring,  did  n't 
you  ?  "  as  one  of  us  might  ask  about  a  horse. 
We  did  not  explore  the  Malahoodus  far,  but 
left  the  other  birch  to  thread  its  cedared  soli- 
tudes, while  we  turned  back  to  try  our  fortunes 
in  the  larger  stream.  We  paddled  on  about 
four  miles  farther,  lingering  now  and  then  op- 
posite the  black  mouth  of  a  moose-path.  The 
incidents  of  our  voyage  were  few,  but  quite  as 
exciting  and  profitable  as  the  items  of  the  news- 
papers. A  stray  log  compensated  very  well 
for  the  ordinary  run  of  accidents,  and  the  float- 
ing car  kiss  of  a  moose  which  we  met  couM 
pass  muster  instead  of  a  singular  discovery  of 
human  remains  by  workmen  in  digging  a  cellar. 
Once  or  twice  we  saw  what  seemed  ghosts  of 
trees ;  but  they  turned  out  to  be  dead  cedars, 
in  winding-sheets  of  long  gray  moss,  made 
spectral  by  the  moonlight.  Just  as  we  were 
turning  to  drift  back  down-stream,  we  heard  a 
loud  gnawing  sound  close  by  us  on  the  bank. 
One  of  our  guides  thought  it  a  hedgehog,  the 


A    MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL.  65 

other  a  bear.  I  inclined  to  the  bear,  as  mak- 
ing the  adventure  more  imposing.  A  rifle  was 
fired  at  the  sound,  which  began  again  with  the 
most  provoking  indifference,  ere  the  echo,  flar- 
ing madly  at  first  from  shore  to  shore,  died  far 
away  in  a  hoarse  sigh. 

Half  past  Eleven,  p.  M.  —  No  sign  of  a 
moose  yet.  The  birch,  it  seems,  was  strained 
at  the  Carry,  or  the  pitch  was  softened  as  she 
lay  on  the  shore  during  dinner,  and  she  leaks 
a  little.  If  there  be  any  virtue  in  the  sitzbad, 
I  shall  discover  it.  If  I  cannot  extract  green 
cucumbers  from  the  moon's  rays,  I  get  some- 
thing quite  as  cool.  One  of  the  guides  shivers 
so  as  to  shake  the  birch. 

Quarter  to  Twelve.  —  Later  from  the  Fresh- 
et!—  The  water  in  the  birch  is  about  three 
inches  deep,  but  the  dampness  reaches  already 
nearly  to  the  waist.  I  am  obliged  to  remove 
the  matches  from  the  ground-floor  of  my  trou- 
sers into  the  upper  story  of  a  breast-pocket. 
Meanwhile,  we  are  to  sit  immovable,  —  for 
fear  of  frightening  the  moose,  —  which  in- 
duces cramps. 

Half  past  Ticelce.  —  A  crashing  is  heard  on 


66  A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL. 

the  left  bunk.  This  is  a  moose  in  good  ear- 
nest. We  are  besought  to  hold  our  breaths, 
if  possible.  My  fingers  so  numb,  I  could  not, 
if  I  tried.  Crash  !  crash  !  again,  and  then  a 
plunge,  followed  by  dead  stillness.  "  Swim- 
min'  crik,"  whispers  guide,  suppressing  all  un- 
necessary parts  of  speech,  — '"  don't  stir."  I, 
for  one,  am  not  likely  to.  A  cold  fog  which 
has  been  gathering  for  the  last  hour  has  fin- 
ished me.  I  fancy  myself  one  of  those  naked 
pigs  that  seem  rushing  out  of  market-doors  in 
winter,  frozen  in  a  ghastly  attitude  of  gallop. 
If  I  were  to  be  shot  myself,  I  should  feel  no 
interest  in  it.  As  it  is,  I  am  only  a  spectator, 
having  declined  a  gun.  Splash  !  again ;  this 
time  the  moose  is  in  sight,  and  click !  click ! 
one  rifle  misses  fire  after  the  other.  The  fog 
lias  quietly  spiked  our  batteries.  The  moose 
goes  crashing  up  the  bank,  and  presently  we 
can  hear  it  chewing  its  cud  close  by.  So  we 
lie  in  wait,  freezing. 

At  one  o'clock,  I  propose  to  land  at  a  de- 
serted wongen  I  had  noticed  on  the  way  up, 
where  I  will  make  a  fire,  and  leave  them  to 
refrigerate  as  much  longer  as  they  please. 


A   MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL.  67 

Axe  hi  hand,  I  go  plunging  through  waist- 
deep  weeds  dripping  with  dew,  haunted  bv 
an  intense  conviction  that  the  gnawing  sound 
we  had  heard  was  a  bear,  and  a  bear  at  least 
eighteen  hands  high.  There  is  something  pok- 
erish  about  a  deserted  dwelling,  even  in  broad 
daylight ;  but  here  in  the  obscure  wood,  and 
the  moon  filtering  unwillingly  through  the 
trees  !  Well,  I  made  the  door  at  last,  and 
found  the  place  packed  fuller  with  darkness 
than  it  ever  had  been  with  hay.  Gradually  I 
was  able  to  make  things  out  a  little,  and  be- 
gan to  hack  frozenly  at  a  log  which  I  groped 
out.  I  was  relieved  presently  by  one  of  the 
guides.  He  cut  at  once  into  one  of  the  up- 
rights of  the  building  till  he  got  some  dry 
splinters,  and  we  soon  had  a  fire  like  the  burn- 
ing of  a  whole  wood-wharf  in  our  part  of  the 
country.  My  companion  went  back  to  the 
birch,  and  left  me  to  keep  house.  First  I 
knocked  a  hole  in  the  roof  (which  the  fire 
began  to  lick  in  a  relishing  way)  for  a  chim- 
ney, and  then  cleared  away  .a  damp  growth 
of  "  pison-elder,"  to  make  a  sleeping  place. 
When  the  unsuccessful  hunters  returned,  I 


68  A    MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL. 

Lad  everything  quite  comfortable,  and  was 
steaming  at  the  rate  of  about  ten  horse-power 
a  minute.  Young  Telemachus  was  sorry  to 
give  up  the  moose  so  soon,  and,  with  the 
teeth  chattering  almost  out  of  his  head,  he  de- 
clared that  he  would  like  to  stick  it  out  all 
night.  However,  he  reconciled  himself  to  the 
fire,  and,  making  our  beds  of  some  "splits" 
which  we  poked  from  the  roof,  we  lay  down 
at  half  past  two.  I,  who  have  inherited  a 
habit  of  looking  into  every  closet  before  I  go 
to  bed,  for  fear  of  fire,  had  become  in  two 
days  such  a  stoic  of  the  woods,  that  I  went 
to  sleep  tranquilly,  certain  that  my  bedroom 
would  be  in  a  blaze  before  morning.  And  so, 
indeed,  it  was ;  and  the  withes  that  bound  it 
together  being  burned  off,  one  of  the  sides  fell 
in  without  waking  me. 

Tuesday,  16/A.  —  After  a  sleep  of  two  hours 
and  a  half,  so  sound  that  it  was  as  good  as 
eight,  we  started  at  half  past  four  for  the  hay- 
makers' camp  again.  We  found  them  just 
getting  breakfast.  We  sat  down  upon  the 
deacon-seat  before  the  fire  blazing  between  the 
bedroom  and  the  salle  a  manger,  which  were 


A    MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL.  69 

simply  two  roofs  of  spruce-bark,  sloping  to  the 
ground  on  one  side,  the  other  three  being  left 
open.  We  found  that  we  had,  at  least,  been 
luckier  than  the  other  party,  for  M.  had  brought 
back  his  convoy  without  even  seeing  a  moose. 
As  there  was  not  room  at  the  table  for  all  of 
us  to  breakfast  together,  these  hospitable 
woodmen  forced  us  to  sit  down  first,  although 
we  resisted  stoutly.  Our  breakfast  consisted 
of  fresh  bread,  fried  salt  pork,  stewed  whortle- 
berries, and  tea.  Our  kind  hosts  refused  to 
take  money  for  it,  nor  would  M.  accept  any- 
thing for  his  trouble.  This  seemed  even  more 
open-handed  when  I  remembered  that  they 
had  brought  all  their  stores  over  the  Carry 
upon  their  shoulders,  paying  an  ache  extra  for 
every  pound.  If  their  hospitality  lacked  any- 
thing of  hard  external  polish,  it  had  all  the 
deeper  grace  which  springs  only  from  sincere 
manliness.  I  have  rarely  sat  at  a  table  d'hote 
which  might  not  have  taken  a  lesson  from 
them,  in  essential  courtesy.  I  have  never  se«n 
a  finer  race  of  men.  They  have  all  the  virtues 
of  the  sailor,  without  that  unsteady  roll  in  the 
gait  with  which  the  ocean  proclaims  itself  quite 


70  A   MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL. 

as  much  in  the  moral  as  in  the  physical  habit 
of  a  man.  They  appeareH  to  me  to  have  hewn 
out  a  short  northwest  passage  through  wintry 
woods  to  those  spice-lands  of  character  which 
we  dwellers  in  cities  must  reach,  if  at  all,  by 
weary  voyages  in  the  monotonous  track  of  the 
trades. 

By  the  way,  as  we  were  embirching  last 
evening  for  our  moose-chase,  I  asked  what  I 
was  to  do  with  my  baggage.  "  Leave  it  here," 
said  our  guide,  and  he  laid  the  bags  upon  a 
platform  of  alders,  which  he  bent  down  to 
keep  them  beyond  reach  of  the  rising  water. 

"  Will  they  be  safe  here  ?  " 

"  As  safe  as  they  would  be  locked  up  in 
your  house  at  home." 

And  so  I  found  them  at  my  return ;  only  the 
hay-makers  had  carried  them  to  their  camp  for 
greater  security  against  the  chances  of  the 
weather. 

We  got  back  to  Kineo  in  time  for  dinner ; 
and  in  the  afternoon,  the  weather  being  fine, 
went  up  the  mountain.  As  we  landed  at  the 
foot,  our  guide  pointed  to  the  remains  of  a 
red  shirt  and  a  pair  of  blanket  trousers. 


A    MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL.  71 

"  That,"  said  lie,  "  is  the  reason  there 's  such 
a  trade  in  ready-made  clo'es.  A  suit  gits  pooty 
well  wore  out  by  the  time  a  camp  breaks  up  in 
the  spring,  and  the  lumberers  want  to  look 
about  right  when  they  come  back  into  the  set- 
tlements, so  they  buy  somethin'  ready-made 
and  heave  ole  bust -up  into  the  bush."  True 
enough,  thought  I,  this  is  the  Ready-made  Age. 
It  is  quicker  being  covered  than  fitted.  So 
we  all  go  to  the  slop-shop  and  come  out  uni- 
formed, every  mother's  son  with  habits  of 
thinking  and  doing  cut  on  one  pattern,  with 
no  special  reference  to  his  peculiar  build. 

Kineo  rises  1750  feet  above  the  sea,  and 
750  above  the  lake.  The  climb  is  very  easy, 
with  fine  outlooks  at  every  turn  over  lake 
and  forest.  Near  the  top  is  a  spring  of  water, 
which  even  Uncle  Zeb  might  have  allowed  to 
be  wholesome.  The  little  tin  dipper  was 
scratched  all  over  with  names,  showing  that, 
vanity,  at  least,  is  not  put  out  of  breath  by  the 
ascent.  0  Ozymandias,  King  of  kings  !  We 
are  all  scrawling  on  something  of  the  kind. 
"My  name  is  engraved  on  the  institutions  of 
my  country,"  thinks  the  statesman.  But, 


72  A    MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL. 

alas  !  institutions  are  as  changeable  as  lir.-dip 
pers ;  men  are  content  to  drink  tie  same  old 
water,  if  the  shape  of  the  cup  only  be  new, 
and  our  friend  gets  two  lines  in  the  Biograph- 
ical Dictionaries.  After  all,  these  inscrip- 
tions, which  make  us  smile  up  here,  are  about 
as  valuable  as  the  Assyrian  ones  which  Hincks 
and  Rawlinson  read  at  cross-purposes.  Have 
we  not  Smiths  and  Browns  enough,  that  we 
must  ransack  the  ruins  of  Nimroud  for  more  ? 
Near  the  spring  we  met  a  Bloomer !  It  was 
the  first  chronic  one  I  had  ever  seen.  It 
struck  me  as  a  sensible  costume  for  the  occa- 
sion, and  it  will  be  the  only  wear  in  the  Greek 
Kalends,  when  women  believe  that  sense  is  an 
equivalent  for  grace. 

The  forest  primeval  is  best  seen  from  the 
top  of  a  mountain.  It  then  impresses  one  by 
its  extent,  like  an  Oriental  epic.  To  be  in  it 
is  nothing,  for  then  an  acre  is  as  good  as  a 
thousand  square  miles.  You  cannot  see  five 
rods  in  any  direction,  and  the  ferns,  mosses, 
and  tree-trunks  just  around  you  are  the  best 
of  it.  As  for  solitude,  night  will  make  a  better 
one  with  ten  feet  square  of  pitch  dark ;  and 


A   MOOSEHEAD    JOURNAL.  73 

mere  size  is  hardly  an  element  of  grandeur, 
except  in  works  of  man,  —  as  the  Colosseum. 
It  is  through  one  or  the  other  pole  of  vanity 
that  men  feel  the  sublime  in  mountains.  It  is 
either,  How  small  great  I  am  beside  it !  or, 
Big  as  you  are,  little  I's  soul  will  hold  a  dozen 
of  you.  The  true  idea  of  a  forest  is  not  a  selva 
selcagyia,  but  something  humanized  a  little, 
as  we  imagine  the  forest  of  Ardeu,  with  trees 
standing  at  royal  intervals,  —  a  commonwealth, 
and  not  a  communism.  To  some  moods,  it  is 
congenial  to  look  over  endless  leagues  of  un- 
broken savagery  without  a  hint  of  man. 

Wednesday.  —  This  morning  fished.  Tele- 
machus  caught  a  laker  of  thirteen  pounds  and 
a  half,  and  I  an  overgrown  cusk,  which  we 
threw  away,  but  which  I  found  afterwards 
Agassiz  would  have  been  glad  of,  for  all  is  fish 
that  comes  to  his  net,  from  the  fossil  down. 
The  fish,  when  caught,  are  straightway  knocked 
on  the  head.  A  lad  who  went  with  us  seem- 
ing to  show  an  over-zeal  in  this  operation,  we 
remonstrated.  But  he  gave  a  good,  human 
reason  for  it,  —  "  He  no  need  to  ha'  gone  and 
•  been  a  fish  if  he  did  n't  like  it,"  —  an  excuse 


74  A   MOOSEHEAD   JOURNAL. 

which  superior  strength  or  cunning  has  always 
found  sufficient.  It  was  some  comfort,  in  this 
case,  to  think  that  St.  Jerome  believed  in  a 
limitation  of  God's  providence,  and  that  it  did 
not  extend  to  inanimate  things  or  creatures 
devoid  of  reason. 

Thus,  my  dear  Storg,  I  have  finished  my 
Oriental  adventures,  and  somewhat,  it  must  be 
owned,  in  the  diifuse  Oriental  manner.  There 
is  very  little  about  Moosehead  Lake  in  it,  and 
not  even  the  Latin  name  for  moose,  which  I 
might  have  obtained  by  sufficient  research.  If 
1  had  killed  one,  I  would  have  given  you  his 
name  in  that  dead  language.  I  did  not  profess 
to  give  you  an  account  of  the  lake  ;  but  a  jour- 
nal, and,  moreover,  my  journal,  with  a  little 
nature,  a  little  human  nature,  and  a  great  deal 
of  I  in  it,  which  last  ingredient  I  take  to  be 
the  true  spirit  of  this  species  of  writing ;  all 
the  rest  being  so  much  water  for  tender  throats 
which  cannot  take  it  neat. 


AT  SEA. 


AT  SEA. 


f]HE  sea  was  meant  to  be  looked  at  from 
the  shore,  as  mountains  are  from  the 
plain.  Lucretius  made  this  discovery 
long  ago,  and  was  blunt  enough  to  blurt  it 
forth,  romance  and  sentiment  —  in  other  words, 
the  pretence  of  feeling  what  we  do  not  feel  — 
being  inventions  of  a  later  day.  To  be  sure, 
Cicero  used  to  twaddle  about  Greek  literature 
and  philosophy,  much  as  people  do  about 
ancient  art  nowadays  ;  but  I  rather  sympa- 
thize with  those  stout  old  Romans  who  de- 
spised both,  and  believed  1hat  to  found  an 
empire  was  as  grand  an  achievement  as  to 
build  an  epic  or  to  carve  a  statue.  But  though 
there  might  have  been  twaddle,  (as  why  not, 
since  there  was  a  Senate  ?  )  I  rather  think  Pe- 


78 

trarch  was  the  first  choragus  of  that  senti- 
mental dance  which  so  long  led  young  folks 
away  from  the  realities  of  life  like  the  piper  of 
Hamelin,  and  whose  succession  ended,  let  us 
hope,  with  Chateaubriand.  But  for  them, 
Byron,  whose  real  strength  lay  in  his  sincerity, 
would  never  have  talked  about  the  "  sea  bound- 
ing beneath  him  like  a  steed  that  knows  his 
rider,"  and  all  that  sort  of  thing.  Even  if  it 
had  been  true,  steam  has  been  as  fatal  to  that 
part  of  the  romance  of  the  sea  as  to  hand-loom 
weaving.  But  what  say  you  to  a  twelve  days' 
calm  such  as  we  dozed  through  in  mid-Atlantic 
and  in  mid- August  ?  I  know  nothing  so  tedious 
at  once  and  exasperating  as  that  regular  slap 
of  the  willed  sails  when  the  ship  rises  and  falls 
with  the  slow  breathing  of  the  sleeping  sea, 
one  greasy,  brassy  swell  following  another, 
slow,  smooth,  immitigable  as  the  series  of 
Wordsworth's  "Ecclesiastical  Sonnets."  Even 
at  his  best,  Neptune,  in  a  tete-a-tete,  has  a  way 
of  repeating  himself,  an  obtuseness  to  the  ne 
quid  nimis,  that  is  stupefying.  It  reminds  me 
of  organ-music  and  my  good  friend  Sebastian 
Bach.  A  fugue  or  two  will  do  very  well ;  but 


AT   SEA.  79 

a  concert  made  up  of  nothing  else  is  altogether 
too  epic  for  me.  There  is  nothing  so  desper- 
ately monotonous  as  the  sea,  and  I  no  longer 
wonder  at  the  cruelty  of  pirates.  Fancy  an 
existence  in  which  the  coming  up  of  a  clumsy 
finback  whale,  who  says  Pooh  !  to  you  solemnly 
as  you  lean  over  the  taffrail,  is  an  event  as  ex- 
citing as  an  election  on  shore  !  The  dampness 
seems  to  strike  into  the  wits  as  into  the  lucifer- 
matches,  so  that  one  may  scratch  a  thought 
half  a  dozen  times  and  get  nothing  at  last  but 
a  faint  sputter,  the  forlorn  hope  of  fire,  which 
only  goes  far  enough  to  leave  a  sense  of  suffo- 
cation behind  it.  Even  smoking  becomes  an 
employment  instead  of  a  solace.  Who  less 
likely  to  come  to  their  wit's  end  than  W.  M.  T. 
and  A.  H.  C.  ?  Yet  I  have  seen  them  driven 
to  five  meals  a  day  for  mental  occupation.  I 
sometimes  sit  and  pity  Noah  ;  but  even  he  had 
this  advantage  over  all  succeeding  navigators, 
that,  wherever  he  landed,  he  was  sure  to  get 
no  ill  news  from  home.  He  should  be  canon- 
ized as  the  patron-saint  of  newspaper  corre- 
spondents, being  the  only  man  who  ever  had 
the  very  last  authentic  intelligence  from  every- 
where. 


80  AT   SEA. 

The  finback  whale  recorded  just  above  lias 
much  the  look  of  a  brown-paper  parcel,  —  the 
whitish  stripes  that  run  across  him  answering 
for  the  pack-thread.  He  has  a  kind  of  acci- 
dental hole  in  the  top  of  his  head,  through 
which  he  pooh-poohs  the  rest  of  creation,  and 
which  looks  as  if  it  had  been  made  by  the 
chance  thrust  of  a  chestnut  rail.  He  was  our 
first  event.  Our  second  was  harpooning  a 
sunfish,  which  basked  dozing  on  the  lap  of  the 
sea,  looking  so  much  like  the  giant  turtle  of 
an  alderman's  drpam,  that  I  am  persuaded  he 
would  have  made  mock-turtle  soup  rather 
than  acknowledge  his  imposture.  But  he 
broke  away  just  as  they  were  hauling  him 
over  the  side,  and  sank  placidly  through  the 
clear  water,  leaving  behind  him  a  crimson  trail 
that  wavered  a  moment  and  was  gone. 

The  sea,  though,  has  better  sights  than  these. 
When  we  were  up  with  the  Azores,  we  began 
to  meet  flying-fish  and  Portuguese  men-of- 
war  beautiful  as  the  galley  of  Cleopatra,  tiny 
craft  that  dared  these  seas  before  Columbus. 
I  have  seen  one  of  the  former  rise  from  the 
crest  of  a  wave,  and,  glancing  from  another 


AT    SEA.  81 

some  two  hundred  feet  beyond,  take  a  fresli 
flight  of  perhaps  as  long.  How  Calderon 
would  have  similized  this  pretty  creature  had 
lie  ever  seen  it !  How  would  he  have  run  him 
up  and  down  the  gamut  of  simile  !  If  a  fish, 
then  a  fish  with  wings ;  if  a  bird,  then  a  bird 
with  fins ;  and  so  on,  keeping  up  the  poor 
shuttle-cock  of  a  conceit  as  is  his  wont. 
Indeed,  the  poor  thing  is  the  most  killing  bait 
for  a  comparison,  and  I  assure  you  I  have 
three  or  four  in  my  inkstand;  — but  be  calm, 
they  shall  stay  there.  Moore,  who  looked  on 
all  nature  as  a  kind  of  Gradus  ad  Parnassum, 
a  thesaurus  of  similitude,  and  spent  his  life  in 
a  game  of  What  is  my  thought  like?  wilh 
himself,  did  the  flying-fish  on  his  way  to  Ber- 
muda. So  I  leave  him  in  peace. 

The  most  beautiful  thing  I  have  seen  at  sea, 
all  the  more  so  that  I  had  never  heard  of  it, 
is  the  trail  of  a  shoal  of  fish  through  the  phos- 
phorescent water.  It  is  like  a  flight  of  silver 
rockets,  or  the  streaming  of  northern  lights 
through  that  silent  nether  heaven.  I  thought 
nothing  could  go  beyond  that  rustling  star- 
foam  which  was  churned  up  by  our  ship's 


82  AT    SEA. 

bows,  or  those  eddies  and  disks  of  dreamy 
flame  that  rose  aiid  wandered  out  of  sight 
behind  us. 

'T  was  fire  our  ship  was  plunging  through, 
Cold  fire  that  o'er  the  quarter  flew  ; 
And  wandering  moons  of  idle  flame 
Grew  full  and  waned,  and  went  and  came, 
Dappling  with  light  the  huge  sea-snake 
That  slid  behind  us  in  the  wake. 

But  there  was  something  even'  more  delicately 
rare  in  the  apparition  of  the  fish,  as  they 
turned  up  in  gleaming  furrows  the  latent 
moonshine  which  the  ocean  seemed  to  have 
hoarded  against  these  vacant  interlunar  nights. 
In  the  'Mediterranean  one  day,  as  we  were 
lying  becalmed,  I  observed  the  water  freckled 
with  dingy  specks,  which  at  last  gathered  to  a 
pinkish  scum  on  the  surface.  The  sea  had 
been  so  phosphorescent  for  some  nights,  that 
when  the  Captain  gave  me  my  bath,  by  dous- 
ing me  with  buckets  from  the  house  on  deck, 
the  spray  flew  off  my  head  and  shoulders  in 
sparks.  It  occurred  to  me  that  this  dirty- 
looking  scum  might  be  the  luminous  matter, 
and  I  had  a  pailful  dipped  up  to  keep  till  after 


AT   SEA.  83 

dark.  When  I  went  to  look  at  it  after  night- 
fall, it  seemed  at  first  perfectly  dead ;  but 
when  I  shook  it,  the  whole  broke  out  into 
what  I  can  only  liken  to  milky  flames,  whose 
lambent  silence  was  strangely  beautiful,  and 
startled  me  almost  as  actual  projection  might  an 
alchemist.  I  could  not  bear  to  be  the  death 
of  so  much  beauty;  so  I  poured  it  all  over- 
board again.  . 

Another  sight  worth  taking  a  voyage  for  is 
that  of  the  sails  by  moonlight.  Our  course 
was  "  south  and  by  east,  half  south,"  so  that 
we  seemed  bound  for  the  full  moon  as  she 
rolled  up  over  our  wavering  horizon.  Then 
I  used  to  go  forward  to  the  bowsprit  and  look 
back.  Our  ship  was  a  clipper,  with  every  rag 
set,  stunsails,  sky-scrapers,  and  all ;  nor  was 
it  easy  to  believe  that  such  a  wonder  could 
be  built  of  canvas  as  that  white  many-storied 
pile  of  cloud  that  stooped  over  me,  or  drew 
back  as  we  rose  and  fell  with  the  waves. 

These  are  all  the  wonders  I  can  recall  of 
my  five  weeks  at  sea,  except  the  sun.  Were 
you  ever  alone  with  the  sun  ?  You  think  it  a 
very  simple  question ;  but  I  never  was,  in  the 


84  AT    SEA. 

full  sense  of  the  word,  till  I  was  held  up  to 
him  one  cloudless  day  on  the  broad  buckler 
of  the  ocean.  I  suppose  one  might  have  the 
same  feeling  in  the  desert.  I  remember  get- 
ting something  like  it  years  ago,  when  I 
climbed  alone  to  the  top  of  a  mountain,  and 
lay  face  up  on  the  hot  gray  moss,  striving  to 
get  a  notion  of  how  an  Arab  might  feel.  It 
was  my  American  commentary  of  the  Koran, 
and  not  a  bad  one.  In  a  New  England  win- 
ter, too,  when  everything  is  gagged  with  snow, 
as  if  some  gigantic  physical  geographer  were 
taking  a  cast  of  the  earth's  face  in  plaster,  the 
bare  knob  of  a  hill  will  introduce  you  to  the 
sun  as  a  comparative  stranger.  But  at  sea 
you  may  be  alone  with  him  day  after  day,  and 
almost  all  day  long.  I  never  understood 
before  that  nothing  short  of  full  daylight  can 
give  the  supremest  sense  of  solitude.  Dark- 
ness will  not  do  so,  for  the  imagination  peo- 
ples it  with  more  shapes  than  ever  were 
poured  from  the  frozen  loins  of  the  populous 
North.  The  sun,  I  sometimes  think,  is  a 
little  grouty  at  sea,  especially  at  high  noon, 
feeliug  that  he  wastes  his  beams  on  those 


AT    SEA.  85 

fruitless  furrows.  It  is  otherwise  with  the 
moon.  She  "comforts  the  night,"  as  Chap- 
man finely  says,  and  I  always  found  her  a 
companionable  creature. 

In  the  ocean-horizon  I  took  untiring  delight. 
It  is  the  true  magic-circle  of  expectation  and 
conjecture,  —  almost  as  good  as  a  wishing-ring. 
What  will  rise  over  that  edge  we  sail  toward 
daily  and  never  overtake  ?  A  sail  ?  an  island  ? 
the  new  shore  of  the  Old  World  ?  Something 
rose  every  day,  which  I  need  not  have  gone  so 
far  to  see,  but  at  whose  levee  I  was  a  much 
more  faithful  courtier  than  on  shore.  A  cloud- 
less sunrise  in  mid-ocean  is  beyond  comparison 
for  simple  grandeur.  It  is  like  Dante's  style, 
bare  and  perfect.  Naked  sun  meets  naked 
sea,  the  true  classic  of  nature.  There  may  be 
more  sentiment  in  morning  on  shore,  —  the 
shivering  fairy-jewelry  of  dew,  the  silver  point- 
lace  of  sparkling  hoar-frost,  —  but  there  is  also 
more  complexity,  more  of  the  romantic.  The 
one  savors  of  the  elder  Edda,  the  other  of  the 
Minnesingers. 

And  I  thus  floating,  lonely  elf, 

A  kind  of  planet  by  myself, 


86  AT   SEA. 

The  mists  draw  up  and  furl  away, 

And  in  the  east  a  warming  gray, 

Faint  as  the  tint  of  oaken  woods 

When  o'er  their  buds  May  breathes  and  broods, 

Tells  that" the  golden  sunrise-tide 

Is  lapsing  up  earth's  thirsty  side, 

Each  moment  purpling  on  the  crest 

Of  some  stark  billow  farther  west : 

And  as  the  sea-moss  droops  and  hears 

The  gurgling  flood  that  nears  and  nears, 

And  then  with  tremulous  content 

Floats  out  each  thankful  filament, 

So  waited  I  until  it  came, 

God's  daily  miracle,  —  0  shame 

That  I  had  seen  so  many  days 

Unthankful,  without  wondering  praise, 

Not  recking  more  this  bliss  of  earth 

Than  the  cheap  fire  that  lights  my  hearth  ! 

But  now  glad  thoughts  and  holy  pour 

Into  my  heart,  as  once  a  year 

To  San  Miniato's  open  door, 

In  long  procession,  chanting  clear, 

Through  slopes  of  sun,  through  shadows  hoar, 

The  coupled  monks  slow-climbing  sing, 

And  like  a  golden  censf  r  swing 

From  rear  to  front,  from  front  to  rear 

Their  alternating  bursts  of  praise, 


AT   SEA.  87 

Till  the  roof's  fading  seraphs  gaze 
Down  through  an  odorous  mist,  that  crawls 
Lingeringly  up  the  darkened  walls, 
And  the  dim  arches,  silent  long, 
Are  startled  with  triumphant  song. 

I  wrote  yesterday  that  the  sea  still  rimmed 
our  prosy  lives  with  mystery  and  conjecture. 
But  one  is  shut  up  on  shipboard  like  Mou- 
taigne  in  his  tower,  with  nothing  to  do  but  to 
review  his  own  thoughts  and  contradict  him- 
self. Dire,  redire,  et  me  contredire,  will  be  the 
staple  of  my  journal  till  I  see  land.  I  say  noth- 
ing of  such  matters  as  the  montagna  bruna  on 
which  Ulysses  was  wrecked ;  but  since  the  six- 
teenth century  could  any  man  reasonably  hope 
to  stumble  on  one  of  those  wonders  which  were 
cheap  as  dirt  in  the  days  of  St.  Saga  ?  Faustus, 
Don  Juan,  and  Tanhaliser  are  the  last  ghosts 
of  legend,  that  lingered  almost  till  the  Gallic 
cock-crow  of  universal  enlightenment  and  dis- 
illusion. The  Public  School  has  done  for  Im- 
agination. What  shall  I  see  in  Outre-Mer,  or 
on  the  way  thither,  but  what  can  be  seen  with 
eyes  ?  To  be  sure,  I  stick  by  the  sea-serpent, 


and  would  fain  believe  that  science  has  scotched, 
not  killed,  him.  Nor  is  he  to  be  lightly  given 
up,  for,  like  the  old  Scandinavian  snake,  he 
binds  together  for  us  the  two  hemispheres  of 
Past  and  Present,  of  Belief  and  Science.  He 
is  the  link  which  knits  us  seaboard  Yankees 
with  our  Norse  progenitors,  interpreting  be- 
tween the  age  of  the  dragon  and  that  of  the 
'railroad  train.  We  have  made  ducks  and 
drakes  of  that  large  estate  of  wonder  and 
delight  bequeathed  to  us  by  ancestral  vikings, 
and  this  alone  remains  to  us  unthrift  heirs  of 
Linn. 

I  feel  an  undefined  respect  for  a  man  who 
has  seen  the  sea-serpent.  He  is  to  his  brother- 
fishers  what  the  poet  is  to  his  fellow-men. 
Where  they  have  seen  nothing  better  than  a 
school  of  horse-mackerel,  or  the  idle  coils  of 
ocean  around  Half-way  Rock,  he  has  caught 
authentic  glimpses  of  the  withdrawing  mantle- 
hem  of  the  Edda  age.  I  care  not  for  the 
monster  himself.  It  is  not  the  thing,  but  the 
belief  in  the  thing,  that  is  dear  to  me.  May 
it  be  long  before  Professor  Owen  is  comforted 
with  the  sight  of  his  unfleshed  vertebrae,  long 


before  they  stretch  many  a  rood  behind  Kim- 
ball's  or  Barnum's  glass,  reflected  in  the  shal- 
low orbs  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Public,  which  stare, 
but  see  not !  When  we  read  that  Captain 
Spalding,  of  the  pink-stern  Three  Follies,  has 
beheld  him  rushing  through  the  brine  like  an 
infinite  series  of  bewitched  mackerel-casks,  we 
feel  that  the  mystery  of  old  Ocean,  at  least, 
has  not  yet  been  sounded,  —  that  Faith  and 
Awe  survive  there  unevaporate.  I  once  ven- 
tured the  horse-mackerel  theory  to  an  old 
fishermaji,  browner  than  a  tomcod.  "Hos- 
mackril ! "  he  exclaimed  indignantly,  "  hos- 
mackril  be  — "  (here  he  used  a  phrase  com- 
monly indicated  in  laical  literature  by  the  same 
sign  which  serves  for  Doctorate  in  Divinity,) 
"  don't  yer  spose  /  know  a  hos-mackril  ? " 
The  intonation  of  that  "/"  would  have  si- 
lenced Professor  Monkbarns  Owen  with  his 
provoking  phoc.a  forever.  What  if  one  should 
ask  him  if  lie  knew  a  trilobite  ? 

The  fault  of  modern  travellers  is,  that  they 
see  nothing  out  of  sight.  They  talk  of  eocene 
periods  and  tertiary  formations,  and  tell  us 
how  the  world  looked  to  the  plesiosaur.  They 


90  AT   SEA. 

take  science  (or  nescience)  with  them,  instead 
of  that  soul  of  generous  trust  their  elders  had. 
All  their  senses  are  sceptics  and  doubters, 
materialists  reporting  things  for  other  sceptics 
to  doubt  still  further  upon.  Nature  becomes 
a  reluctant  witness  upon  the  stand,  badgered 
with  geologist  hammers  and  phials  of  acid. 
There  have  been  no  travellers  since  those 
included  in  Hakluyt  and  Purchas,  except 
Martin,  perhaps,  who  saw  an  inch  or  two  into 
the  invisible  at  the  Orkneys.  We  have  peri- 
patetic lecturers,  but  no  more  travellers. 
Travellers'  stories  are  no  longer  proverbial. 
We  have  picked  nearly  every  apple  (wormy  or 
otherwise)  from  the  world's  tree  of  knowledge, 
and  that  without  an  Eve  to  tempt  us.  Two 
or  three  have  hitherto  hung  luckily  beyond 
reach  on  a  lofty  bough  shadowing  the  interior 
of  Africa,  but  there  is  -a  German  Doctor  at  this 
very  moment  pelting  at  them  with  sticks  and 
stones.  It  may  be  only  next  week,  and  these 
too,  bitten  by  geographers  and  geologists,  will 
be  thrown  away. 

Analysis  is  carried  into  everything.     Even 
Deity  is  subjected  to  chemic  tests.     We  must 


AT   SEA.  91 

have  exact  knowledge,  a  cabinet  stuck  full  of 
facts  pressed,  dried,  or  preserved  in  spirits  in- 
stead of  the  large,  vague  world  our  fathers  had. 
With  them  science  was  poetry;  with  us,  poetry 
is  science.  Our  modern  Eden  is  a  hortus  sic- 
cus.  Tourists  defraud  rather  than  enrich  us. 
They  have  not  that  sense  of  aesthetic  propor- 
tion which  characterized  the  elder  traveller. 
Earth  is  no  longer  the  fine  work  of  art  it  was, 
for  nothing  is  left  to  the  imagination.  Job 
Hortop,  arrived  at  the  height  of  the  Bermudas, 
thinks  it  full  time  to  indulge  us  in  a  merman. 
Nay,  there  is  a  story  told  by  Webster,  in  his 
"  Witchcraft,"  of  a  merman  with  a  mitre,  who, 
on  being  sent  back  to  his  watery  diocese  of  fin- 
land,  made  what  advances  he  could  toward  an 
episcopal  benediction  by  bowing  his  head  thrice. 
Doubtless  he  had  been  consecrated  by  St. 
Antony  of  Padua.  A  dumb  bishop  would  be 
sometimes  no  unpleasant  phenomenon,  by  the 
way.  Sir  John  Hawkins  is  not  satisfied  with 
telling  us  about  the  merely  sensual  Canaries, 
but  is  generous  enough  to  throw  us  in  a  hand- 
ful of  "  certain  flitting  islands "  to  boot. 
Henrv  Hawkes  describes  the  visible  Mexican 


92  AT   SEA. 

cities,  and  then  is  not  so  frugal  but  that  he  can 
give  us  a  few  invisible  ones.  Thus  do  these 
generous  ancient  mariners  make  children  of  us 
again.  Their  successors  show  us  an  earth 
effete  and  past  bearing,  tracing  out  with  the 
eyes  of  industrious  fleas  every  wrinkle  and 
crowfoot. 

The  journals  of  the  elder  navigators  are 
prose  Odysseys.  The  geographies  of  our  an- 
cestors were  works  of  fancy  and  imagination. 
They  read  poems  where  we  yawn  over  items. 
Their  world  was  a  huge  wonder-horn,  ex- 
haustless  as  that  which  Thor  strove  to  drain. 
Ours  would  scarce  quench  the  small  thirst  of 
a  bee.  No  modem  voyager  brings  back  the 
magical  foundation-stones  of  a  Tempest.  No 
Marco  Polo,  traversing  the  desert  beyond  the 
city  of  Lok,  would  tell  of  things  able  to  inspire 
the  mind  of  Milton  with 

"  Calling  shapes  and  beckoning  shadows  dire, 
And  airy  tongues  that  syllable  men's  names 
On  sands  and  shores  and  desert  wildernesses." 

It  was  easy  enough  to  believe  the  story  of 
Dante,  when  two  thirds  of  even  the  upper- 


AT    SEA.  93 

world  were  yet  untraversed  and  unmapped. 
With  every  step  of  the  recent  traveller  our 
inheritance  of  the  wonderful  is  diminished. 
Those  beautifully  pictured  notes  of  the  Possi- 
ble are  redeemed  at  a  ruinous  discount  in  the 
hard  and  cumbrous  coin  of  the  actual.  How 
are  we  not  defrauded  and  impoverished  ?  Does 
California  vie  with  El  Dorado  ?  or  are  Bruce's 
Abyssinian  kings  a  set-off  for  Prester  John  ? 
A  bird  in  the  bush  is  worth  two  in  the  hand. 
And  if  the  philosophers  have  not  even  yet 
been  able  to  agree  whether  the  world  has  any 
existence  independent  of  ourselves,  how  do  we 
not  gain  a  loss  in  every  addition  to  the  cata- 
logue of  Vulgar  Errors  ?  Where  are  the 
fishes  which  nidificated  in  trees  ?  Where  the 
monopodes  sheltering  themselves  from  the  sun 
beneath  their  single  umbrella-like  foot,  —  um- 
brella-like in  everything  but  the  fatal  necessity 
of  being  borrowed  ?  Where  the  Acephali, 
with  whom  Herodotus,  in  a  kind  of  ecstasy, 
wound  up  his  climax  of  men  with  abnormal 
top-pieces  ?  Where  the  Roc  whos^e  eggs  are 
possibly  boulders,  needing  no  far-fetched  the- 
ory of  glacier  or  iceberg  to  account  for  them  ? 


94  AT    SEA. 

Where  the  tails  of  the  men  of  Kent  ?  Where 
the  no  legs  of  the  bird  of  paradise?  Where 
the  Unicorn,  with  that  single  horn  of  his,  sov- 
ereign against  all  manner  of  poisons  ?  Where 
the  Fountain  of  Youth?  Where  that  Thes- 
salian  spring,  which,  without  cost  to  the  coun- 
try, convicted  and  punished  perjurers?  Where 
the  Amazons  of  Orellaua  ?  All  these,  and  a 
thousand  other  varieties,  we  liave  lost,  and 
have  got  nothing  instead  of  them.  And  those 
•who  have  robbed  us  of  them  have  stolen  that 
which  not  enriches  themselves.  It  is  so  much 
wealth  cast  into  the  sea  beyond  all  approach 
of  diving-bells.  We  owe  no  thanks  to  Mr.  J. 
E.  Worcester,  whose  Geography  we  studied 
enforcedly  at  school.  Yet  even  he  had  his 
relentings,  and  in  some  softer  moment  vouch- 
safed us  a  fine,  inspiring  print  of  the  Mael- 
strom, answerable  to  the  twenty-four  mile 
diameter  of  its  suction.  Year  by  year,  more 
and  more  of  the  world  gets  disenchanted. 
Even  the  icy  privacy  of  the  arctic  and  antarctic 
circles  is  invaded.  Our  youth  are  no  longer 
ingenious,  as  indeed  no  ingenuity  is  demanded 
of  them.  Everything  is  accounted  for,  every- 


AT    SEA.  95 

thing  cut  and  dried,  and  the  world  may  be  put 
together  as  easily  as  the  fragments  of  a  dis- 
sected map.  The  Mysterious  bounds  nothing 
now  on  the  North,  South,  East,  or  West.  We 
have  played  Jack  Homer  with  our  earth,  till 
there  is  never  a  plum  left  in  it. 


Cambridge  :  Printed  by  Welch,  JJigelow,  &  Co. 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last 
date  stamped  below. 


PS    Lowell  - 


2322  A  Moosehead 
M78   journal 


Mia. 
PS 

2322 
M78 


WORKS  OF  JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


"  James  Russell  Lowell  has  produced  so  much  verse  of  various 
exquisite  and  exalted  beauty  since  he  first  began  to  use  a  musical 
fen,  now  some  thirty-six  years  ago,  that  the -world  is  apt  to  asso- 
ciate his  fame  exclusively  -with  his  poetry  ;  yet,  had  he  -written 
nothing  beyond  his  four  volumes  of  prose,  he  -would  have  been  able 
to  command  a  place  in  the  front  rank  of  American  men  of  genius. 
We  find  in  LowelCs  prose  such  -wealth  of -wit  and  humor,  such  , 
opulence  of  learning,  such  treasures  of  -wisdom,  such  splendor  of 
imagery,  and  such,  sumptuous  diction,  that,  while -we  revel  in  i.'s 
affluence,  -we  forget  the  gifts  and  fascinations  of  all  other  authors, 
and  seem  never  to  have  met  so  dazzling  a  combination  of  bril- 
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